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Important Video Brand Guidelines

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Important Video Brand Guidelines

When you think of some of the most well-known brands across the globe, such as Pepsi or McDonald’s, have you ever wondered how or why you know their brand immediately just from seeing the logo? This is down to the company’s brand guidelines, which is a crucial part of a business’ branding strategy. Protecting and curating your brand over time ensures that your hard work pays off in establishing your brand’s values.

Brand Video Guidelines

What are branding guidelines?

It can be a difficult task in itself to establish your brand; once that has been achieved successfully, your next crucial step is to maintain it. In other words, you don’t want your brand to go to waste by undoing any hard work that has already been done.

Brand guidelines are essentially rules to help your company and your brand start on the right path. These rules can include everything from your logo size, brand colours and typeface, ensuring that your message and services are instantly recognisable.

This may appear quite daunting and possibly even quite complicated, but this is why brand guidelines can ensure you remain on track and everything becomes unified. At the end of the day, guidelines are recommendations set to help make your brand what it is and give it an identity.

Don’t forget to read the Best Practices for Improving Your Video SEO

How can branding guidelines help?

Brand guidelines are a way to keep your brand consistent across all platforms. By following the recommendations set for your brand, you can consolidate the look and feel of your branding strategy across all media. With so much competition out there in your particular industry, it is important that you find a way of standing out; strong brand guidelines can make sure you are different from those around you.

As well as having a consistent brand internally for your employees’ benefit, having a constant and unique image can also have a huge positive impact on your customer. This uniformity will, in turn, protect your brand as it becomes more recognisable in the public eye. Whether it’s your website, mobile app or other advertising material, the design should be identical across all platforms to make sure it is identifiable and distinguished.

In terms of video, a study carried out by B2B Marketing in 2014 showed that video is becoming the best type of content to help you stand out, and also the best kind of content that resonates with your audience. When you think about it this way, it really is important that you ensure you have brand guidelines in place for other mediums as well as the overall aesthetics of your company.

Also read: 8 Very Best Video Editing Software For Macbook Pro

What do brand guidelines consist of?

Brand guidelines can encompass a number of different elements to ensure your brand is unique and stands out from your competitors in everything you do. Essentially a style guide for your company, these guidelines that you should be looking to follow include:

  • Tone
  • Language
  • Colours
  • Logo usage
  • Sound
  • Typography

The videos that you release are a direct reflection your brand and help build on our brand perception as well as releasing fresh and interesting content. If you have your brand guidelines to hand, this shouldn’t be a problem. Guidelines for your brand will ensure your image is protected, consistent and innovative among your competitors.

Branding experts such as Creative Spark can work with you to build up video brand guidelines and keep everything solidified and unique to your business.

 

The Secrets to Building More Links with Broken Link Building Strategies

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The Secrets to Building More Links with Broken Link Building Strategies

Link building is not dead. It is the farthest thing from death right now. Each and every year, it has been predicted that link building would become irrelevant but that does not seem to be happening. As a matter of fact, it is being used more and more in search engine optimization (SEO) across the globe. Google revealed that link building was part of its original search algorithm. Tests and reviews have proven that it still is an integral part of the search engines’ algorithms. Bing and Yahoo are the other search engines that are worth optimizing for and they take this into consideration too.

Link Building broken link method

Let’s talk dead or broken link building now. Currently, this is the talk of the SEO streets. People think of it as a straightforward and narrow strategy that you will be done with in less than fifteen minutes. It is one of the most creative link building strategies to work with today. Sure, you can stick to the work of finding broken links on the blog rolls and link pages,then ask the webmaster to replace them with a link to you. However, with the broken link building, you can go well beyond this.

What exactly is broken link building?

Just for the purposes of clarity, it is worth pointing out what broken link building is all about. It is also known as dead link building. It is a process that involves finding an old resource that has now become a 404 error page and then rebuilding it. You then contact anybody who still has links to this page to inform them that they have a broken link on their site. After fixing the broken link, you will have a similar but updated version of the resource so that they can link to it instead.

This is a really cool way of getting the link that you want in an ocean of links. Remember that link building is not just one of those things that you do with your eyes closed. It is a very tricky affair and you have to make sure that you get it done correctly. Having low quality links is going to see your site’s search ranking being lowered. Google assumes that low quality sites link to fellow low quality sites. Birds of a feather flock together. So, you definitely do not want to be linking to a spam site or anything of the sort.

Dead link building is a tiresome process and it takes a good amount of time to complete. This is one of those SEO strategies that need the help of professionals to do it successfully. You do not want to be stressed up because you were rebuilding broken links or you decided against B2B services. B2B is the other strategy of business growth that you will always need professional help with.

The success of one individual

Ben Jackson is the founder of SEO discovery, a blog that provides free tutorials on SEO work. He is also one of the first people to describe dead link building properly. One of the first pages to rebuild that he ever worked with was a site that was called Dosh Dosh. The page had a large number of backlinks in the neighborhood of 700. Imagine if you could get in touch with owners of these 700 links to link to your site? The site was still online but then every single page presented a 404 error.

After running a Google search on ‘Dosh Dosh’, he found a post that has listed some 18 posts that must be read at Dosh Dosh. Long story short, he found a page that he used to improve the Dosh Dosh version by adding a few metrics. The seven hundred links were good but a majority of them were repeat links from sites that no longer existed, but a number of good links existed with PR.

He went ahead to email some 40 webmasters who had PR and those who might not have PR but had decent Alexa rankings. Sites with high Alexa rankings and 0 PR were ignored. The results is that seven webmasters emailed and linked back, 3 emailed but did not link, 1 did not email back but linked and 1 emailed back, linked, wrote a blog post about the link building and linked again.

Why this was not greatly successful

There are several reasons why this might not have been so successful:

  1. There was little organization in the emailing work
  2. Poor outreach plan
  3. Other page characteristics such as numerous outbound links

All in all, this proved that dead link building is a great way to earn high quality links from various webmasters across the web. The best thing that you can do for your business is to seek professional assistance to get this work done for you.

About the Guest contributor:

Derek Iwasiuk runs a national digital search engine optimization firm headquartered in Minneapolis. He also spends a lot of his free time educating the minds of thousands of young SEOs and top agencies on issues like dead link building and B2B services. You can also follow him on Twitter @Diwasiuk

How To Prevent Data Loss In The Cloud

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How To Prevent Data Loss In The Cloud

The rise of cloud-based services such as Dropbox and iCloud helps people keep lots of information in one single place. But as recent scandals involving celebrities showed us, hackers find ways to get into our personal information, from uploading private photos to sharing social security numbers. This doesn’t mean you can’t use these services or that they aren’t safe. Protecting your accounts is both crucial and easy to do. Here are five ways to make sure your data doesn’t get lost in the cloud.

Create Difficult Passwords

Cloud data security

Image via Flickr by Automobile Italia

The worst thing to do when creating a new account is to use an easy password such as “12345” or “password,” yet many people still do this. They feel it’s too difficult to come up with and remember several unique passwords that are hard to hack. Use a password manager such as LastPass, which creates passwords with random letters and characters. You only have to create a master password, and your information is secure.

Add Two-Factor Authentication to Your Cloud

Companies such as Amazon and Google have added an extra step to log in to accounts. For example, the authentication adds questions that only you would know the answer to. These accounts also tell you if there is suspicious activity going on in your account. Set up alerts for your smartphone and email so that if hackers get into your information you can quickly put a stop to it.

Use Encryption to Protect Data

Your unique password is the first step in preventing hackers from accessing your files, but if they manage to get through, encrypting your data is the next step to stop them. Many strong encryption schemes exist, including enterprise-owned keys, which are produced specifically for each client to encrypt their data before uploading it to the cloud. Some products have enhanced security features to detect threats occurring in your account and can use that information to prevent attacks from happening.

Back Up Information to a Local Server

This sounds time-consuming, but it never hurts to have added backup. A virus or even a server crash has the potential to wipe out sensitive and personal information. Using a local server keeps your documents handy without the need to upload to the internet. If you only have a few documents you want to protect, buy an external hard drive for your computer.

Check All Your Connected Accounts

If you use a service like Dropbox, you can also connect your email accounts to get access to it. This helps if multiple people are working on a presentation and need to access files, but once the presentation is over, make sure those email addresses aren’t still connected. If someone leaves the company and information isn’t deleted, a hacker could have easy access to download sensitive company information.

Cloud-based data storage companies are constantly updating their servers to keep information safe from hackers. But you must also take proactive steps like these so no one can get to your personal information or even wipe your family vacation photos.

How Sophisticated Is Employee Monitoring At Technology Companies

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How Sophisticated Is Employee Monitoring At Technology Companies

The technology today is becoming increasingly powerful and all-encompassing that sometimes threatens the very privacy of an individual. In the employment sector, technology is both a boon and a bane. With the development of state-of-the-art monitoring software and hardware, business today are able to perform basic transactions, conduct investigations, minimize or avoid liability and eventually, achieve global competitiveness in this cutthroat industry. On the part of the employee, monitoring within the workforce can be beneficial if immediate feedback is involved and keep the entire workforce focused and efficient while discouraging unethical behavior.

employee monitoring software

However, the same employee monitoring technology also provides employers to observeand watch every aspect of their workforce’s actions as well as monitor, communications, private or office related and keeps tracks of the whereabouts of the employee whether they are inside or outside the workplace. As more and more business start using employing monitoring system, this practice will soon become universal. With all the benefits it can provide, unreasonable and excessive employee monitoring is bound to breach the privacy that all employees expect to get even when they are in the workplace.

This could also lead to a “big brother” culture and employees may start sneaking just for them to be able to perform personal activities. If employees think that they are being spied upon even when they are doing their jobs accordingly, it could lead to a low morale within the work place. In the end, employees may complain and there is a possibility that they would quit for fear that the employee monitoring software is used even for nonthreatening work purposes. On a positive note, an employee monitoring software can also end workplace harassment and prevent IP theft among others.

As technology improves, so does employee monitoring software. Even the most basic monitoring application is now very sophisticated. In an IT environment, employees are thought to be computer wiz and know how to circumvent and avoid monitoring interval so they can perform tasks that are not within their job description. Particularly in a technology company where a lot of prototypes are being developed, employee monitoring software is a key part of making sure that no company secret is leaked out.

Basic employee monitoring software enables the administrator to monitor employees without them knowing. With special coding in place, employees’ computers can be remotely monitored without visible effects on the PC such as slowing down or crashing. In addition, the websites visited by the employee can also be tracked and record emails without the employee knowing about it.

A sophisticated employee monitoring software can operate invisibly and even IT employees will not be able to notice that his or her computer activities are being monitored. The employee monitoring software can even record keystrokes in work applications, websites, emails and IM chats. This is done in real time enabling employers to observe what is happening as it is happening.

All employee monitoring software basically functions by monitoring and recording the computer activities of employees. This means that whenever an employee logs into the system upon reaching the office, computer activities during his or her shift will be registered in the application using unique identity codes predefined according to the employee. So in general, the employee monitoring software logs the overall time spent by employee performing their tasks in and out of the office.

Regardless of whether an employee will see this as a breach of their privacy, the overall benefits offered by employee monitoring software in ensuring workforce efficiency is incontestable. In the end, the company’s workforce will be enjoying the same benefits if the business is successful.

 

Recover back lost iPhoto Library Photos after upgrading to EL Capitan Mac.

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Recover back lost iPhoto Library Photos after upgrading to EL Capitan Mac.

Mac’s are the most efficient and reliable operating system. It is a widely reputed OS and seldom has system failures. But a machine is after all a machine and any system or OS failure can give the biggest glitch of your life if you haven’t backed up your data.

That’s where Time Machine comes for your rescue. To save you from those mishaps, set up Time Machine backup on your Mac. It is a worthwhile course to do, which you realize once you get to restore your entire hard disk data restored afresh like before after any recent hard drive failure or data loss.

Recover back lost iPhoto Library Photos

Such an incident happened with me few days ago with my MacBook Air. Just when I was on the course of upgrading to the El Capitan and restoring my all old files, I just happened to see that a new application “Photos”in El Capitan and no iPhoto.

The challenge before me was to restore my iPhoto library on El Capitan.  I couldn’t find my old iPhoto library list, although I got to see the iphoto app along with the Photos app.

So in a nutshell, I concluded that I lost all of my Old Photos and was not able to recover from Time machine as well.

But thankfully, with the help of a little research online, I founded the solution to the problem.

How did I recover my iPhoto library photos?

  1. I went to Photo folder and then to the location of the original iPhoto library.
  2. I selected ‘Open With’ and chose Photos (not iPhoto).
  3. A window appeared stating ‘Preparing Library’.
  4. I got my old iPhoto library back with Photos with all the old pictures.

After then whenever I opened iPhoto, it gave me a message that the library had been migrated to Photos and that iPhoto would be read only.

However, there are still few other methods as well to look out for depending on the Photo loss Situation

 

  • Trash

We all know one of the most basic and easiest way to look for your lost photos is open iPhoto trash or Trash on your Mac.  You can select your “iPhoto Library” and restore it back from here. You will get back your deleted photos back. However, there is no use in looking in Trash if that folder is already empty.

 

  • Spotlight

If you cannot find the files in trash, then the next place to look is spotlight located at the top right corner of the menu bar. You can search with the library file or the default name iPhoto Library. You can also search by “iPhoto Library” through all the folders and drives of your system.

 

  • The Finder application

  • Load the finder application. You can find a square with a smiling in your dock.
  • Open a search window from the file menu
  • The first dropdown is named Kind, and then select the file size from menu.
  • Change the second drop down menu option to “greater than”.
  • The next box would be an open square box for the size of file. The size would depend on the number of photos that have been saved in the library file. You can try 5 for medium or if you had many photos or videos you can even try 10.
  • The next dropdown would have KB (Kilobytes) you need to change that to GB (Gigabytes).

 

When you click on search, it will search and show all the files which are above the specified file size. You can locate your file from the displayed file list.

Note: iPhoto 9.6.1 is the only version which is compatible with El Capitan. But since it is not a free update, iPhoto 8.1.2 cannot be updated to iPhoto 9.6.1.

It is recommended to run all the repairs – repair permissions, repair library, to make sure that the iPhoto library has no issues.  But before you go to repair it, keep a backup copy of the iPhoto Library. This is essential since you can easily restore the original library, if the repair should go wrong.

It is better to do this exercise before upgrading your iPhoto Library.  It needs to be done before you upgrade the system, because it will be impossible to rollback after the upgrade, if you find any issues later on with the library.

If iPhoto Library is stored on an external drive, move it to a drive that is formatted.

 

If after applying all the methods, your photos couldn’t be recovered and you have no backup then, better use third Party photo recovery software. Read more at retrievephotos.com

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery Software is the solution for you.  This is one of the best Photo Recovery Software which facilitates you to retrieve iPhoto photos which are lost.  The software comprises of a very user-friendly interface and powerful recovery engine. Apart from all this, you can also recover video and audio files, from your Mac.

 

About the Guest Author:

Sumona is a technical blogger and writer. She has over 2 year experience in Photo Recovery technology. On her free time she writes about technical tips and tutorials.

 

 

10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You about Web Design

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10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You about Web Design

With the rise of online marketing, web designers and web development companies have also increased in number to meet the growing demand for web and web design services.’ Explains a company that offers web design in Wirral. This is to say that competition is getting tougher and tougher.

web design competitors analysis

In this growing community, it’s easy to meet someone who is better than you are. However, competition must not be treated entirely as a threat. There are also several things you can gain from your competitors. In fact, they could be one of the reasons why you strive to be better. What’s more important is that you can learn from their successes and mistakes and use them as guides for what you should do and avoid. Here are 10 of the things your competitors can teach you about web design.

Homepage

First impression lasts. The homepage welcomes your user and gives an overview of what your site is all about. Whether you like it or not, the competition starts here. With competitors around, you will always aim to have better homepage design.

Easy navigation

The design of your website should always be aimed at getting the interest of visitors. They will not stay if the design confuses them. Instead, they will click the close button. Hence, getting the layout of your website correctly is crucial.

Study your competitors’ website. Take note of the layout, the navigation, and your experience as a whole. If you find theirs easier and more convenient to use, with clean and clutter-free layout, then it’s your chance to gauge what better things you can do for your website.

Graphics

Do you think images are for aesthetics? Think again. Take for an example of, a business website. How can you sell your product and services if your images are boring and there are only texts without any correspondence to that image? Remember, visitors sometimes haven’t much time to read. It’s easier to share images than mere texts. Compare the graphics in your website with your competitors’. If you see something new, try to find out how it is done. Since everyone has different levels of creativity, there’s always something you can learn from others.

Color Scheme

Branding – that’s one of the most important thing for a business to easily entice people. Look at the color, for example. What’s the dominant color of Facebook or Twitter? Try looking at your design. Ask yourself whether you are combining colors harmoniously. Is it fit on the theme of your business? Is it too dull or too bright? Take note, consistency is very important here. Make it look like done by a professional website development company.

Content

The right meat entices readers. Factoring in your target market is part of your web design plan and processing. The content must create the right blend to your design. It’ll serve as guide to your audience where to go, what button to click, and most importantly, what your whole business is all about.

Most websites ensure that they provide quality content, why not live up to that standard? It’s much better if you give something unique into the table.

Social media accounts

How to make things viral? Share it on social media. See to it that important postings on your website can easily be shared over social media accounts through buttons.

Consistency on the account names with your business should be taken note. For example, a site called ConvertBetter can have an account in Twitter and Instagram as @convertbetter or in Facebook as ConvertBetter. Linking these accounts to your site is a faster way of advertising and marketing.

Mobile adaptability

A site looks different in desktop or in mobile. If you found out that your competitor has no mobile view for their site, then it only means it’s not updated – and it also means you have the edge. Audiences are using mobiles right now for convenience. The goal here is always to be in touch with the audience. Make your site more responsive to different platforms.

Blog engagement and involvement

Do you want to deliver more information to target audience? Make something like a blog for a small business. It offers your sites visibility, improve SEO, and absorb potential and long-term customers. You may want your visitors to comment and share your posts on their networks.

Some business owners who fail to run their websites by themselves tend to hire a company that believes deeply in this: We Make Websites ConvertBetter. Not only will you save time, but you can also compete better in terms of having more converts.

What not to put for better web design

Study the critics of your competitors’ sites. Let them teach you what to do and do the opposite. Do not make the same mistake again and again.

Importance of looking for a better web designer

You’ll get stuck. Dealing again and again to the same web designer without improvement will make your site lose its chance to compete. Why not look for another professional website development company like ConvertBetter. Take it to the next level.

Learning is not limited to studying in school and training camps, you can also get it from the people you are in contact with. This includes your competitors. Still, you have to remember that your biggest competition is yourself so always aim to be better than what you are now.

About the guest author:

Pauline Etcuban, understands the intrinsic attributes of making excellent content that suits the needs of every business especially when it comes online marketing. She can conceptualize and implement marketing plans, together with ConvertBetter, an expert of Online marketing company and Web designers helps her be a professional marketer.

3 Things to Look for in Shopping Cart Software

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3 Things to Look for in Shopping Cart Software

Setting up an e-commerce business is an important step in building your brand. If you have never set up an online store before, you will want to familiarize yourself with a few key elements that will make your website run well and provide your customers with the protection they will expect. One of the most important tools you will need to have is online shopping cart software. This software will allow your customers to shop around your site, check-out and pay all with the security they need to keep their information safe as well as your business protected.

ecommerce shopping cart software

If you are ready to shop for this software, what should you be looking for? Here are three key aspects to get started.

Speed of Checkout

One of the most common reasons that people shop online is the convenience of being able to find, choose and pay for products quickly. When it comes to shopping cart software, you will want to find a program that prioritizes this speed. An online shopping cart that uses a single page checkout system can be your best choice because it provides the customer with the ease of inputting information without having to sit through a number of pages reloads to add more information. It can also be helpful to make sure that these types of checkouts also process the order with as few boxes to fill in as possible. If you are looking to get the customer to sign up for email newsletters or sell them something else, this can be done after the checkout process itself, not during it.

Support for Discounts and Coupons while Shopping

Another reason that most consumers choose to shop online is that they can find better deals on the products and services they need. Often, these savings come in the form of discount and coupon codes that can be used during checkout. Your shopping cart software should be able to support these codes so that the discount can be taken off the total price. For many businesses, having the code applied at the beginning of the checkout process makes it simple and easy for customers to know what they are saving on their current order.

Comprehensive Reports

Once you have taken care of the customer, it’s time to take care of your business. A good shopping cart software program will be able to provide you with all the analytics and reports you need to continue running your business. This can include detailed sales reports that not only help you with your account but can also help you in determining what is working and what isn’t when it comes to the products your customers are buying.

Once you have found a shopping cart software application that best meets your needs, you can easily set it up on your e-commerce site and start selling.

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