The first crucial step to building a successful website

What really goes into building a website?

Prizm's website

What a loaded question!  While it may appear that certain websites you visit are just simple, straightforward pages, you might be surprised to know that the planning and development that goes into creating those seemingly simple pages is actually quite in depth.

It could even be stated that building a website is much like building a house.  Once the foundation has been poured, and the framing is done, it becomes a far more complicated task to add to, remove from, or dramatically change the layout.  In fact, if the changes are too demanding, it would be best to demolish what you’ve started, and begin once again from the ground up.

Video on Website Improves Brand

Why do you need video on your website?

As a video production and web design hybrid company, we are asked this question a lot. And while the answer may seem straightforward to us, many businesses are still miffed about what they can gain from online media.

The Mid-Roll: Why second is best

In the family of online video advertising, being the middle child has never felt so good.

For those of you familiar with viewing popular videos, TV shows, and movies online (say, through YouTube or Hulu), I’m sure you’ve become quite accustomed to the ad viewing experience: you get one video advertisement right off the bat, a few trickled throughout the middle, and a final ad just before the end of the show. You can’t skip over the ads, but they usually last only 10-15 seconds anyhow.

Two recent studies by Limelight Networks and FreeWheel compared the length of online video ads versus how likely they were to be completed by the user. Unsurprisingly, they discovered that 15-second ads are 20 percent more likely to be viewed in entirety compared to 30-second commercials. However, when both 15-second and 30-second ads were attached to a longer root video, such as a 45-minute television show, the likelihood that either ad would be viewed was virtually the same, at roughly 90 percent.

Measuring your social media’s ROI

A common question between businesses and marketers alike is “How do I measure the ROI of my social media campaign?” Well, folks, I have the answer:

You don’t.

A common myth about social media is that it can be the end-all solution for advertising. Plus, it’s free — perfect, right? Wrong. While social media can be part of your marketing campaign, it cannot carry the ship.

How much do keywords matter?

My husband and I have always been sticklers for doing research before making any kind of major purchase.  From cars to appliances to electronics, it is important to know that you will be getting the most for your money before committing to spending it.  While it hasn’t been that long ago that we had to go to our local library to peruse the latest copies of Consumer Reports for information, now one has to go only as far as the closest computer with an internet connection to learn everything pertinent to making an informed buying decision.

A while back, I thought I had done my due diligence before making a major purchase – so much that even Dave Ramsey would have been proud!  I actually spent 4 months doing research in my spare time, before making the final choice, which was based on my research.  Here’s where it gets interesting:  I have had quite a lot of trouble with this product, even though everything I read raved about the item in question.  Did I get a “lemon”?  Or was all of my research bogus?  What did I do wrong?!

I continued to contemplate these questions, until it finally occurred to me that every time I did a new search for information, I always used “reviews” in my search.  So, I decided to try an experiment. 

Using QR Codes

Question: What’s black, white, and read all over?

Answer: A QR Code!

What is it?

You might recognize it if you’ve ever done any work with tracking commercial products. A QR (Quick Response) Code is a barcode that is now surfacing as a marketing tool in the United States

Media Convergence

A lot of folks ask us, what is media convergence? The best way to describe media convergence and how Prizm employs it is as follows: Media convergence combines traditional media and online media to provide multiple outlets to reach a target demographic. Media convergence provides not only return on presence with traditional media but also return on investment (ROI) with online media.

Traditional Media (TV, radio, newspaper, billboard) doesn’t measure the actual eyeball, but rather impressions. Nielsen Ratings says we think this many people saw your program or commercial but in reality, they don’t know whether you fell asleep or fed the dog. We consider this a “return on presence” investment.

On the other hand, Online Media (web, email, social media) can measure the eyeball. We call this “return on investment”.

I’m sure many of you are saying, wait a minute, we’ve been measuring our ROI on traditional media for years. Yes, but you’ve actually been measuring your return on investment on what was available to measure. Now’s there’s more opportunity.

For nearly a decade, the maturity curves of media have been shifting. As we have studied this fact, we also understood that media convergence would provide the client the best of both worlds. Presence is still important as television has the ability to communicate to the masses, even though we don’t exactly know to whom. On the other hand, we can now talk to an “audience of one” with the ability to reach many online.

With Media Convergence, the power is now in our clients’ hands. If you are going to create a Media Site(tm) to build B2B or B2C relationships with your audience, you might also want to think about other communication styles such as EVM Mail(tm) – video email – or commercial television. If you strategize your goals in advance of shooting one element of communication, you can impact your budget and consistency in communication three-fold.