At Globe Runner, we pride ourselves on running a different kind of office space. Not only does our headquarters double as a gallery space for exciting artists, but every few months or so we also hold a celebratory blowout and invite the public to come see our new pieces on display.

Globe Runner’s June Artist Exhibition

Last Thursday, June 8, artist Hilda Lafleur and the Globe Runner staff held a gala to show off her colorful, iconic, and pop-inspired work.

Generously, Hilda raffled off two of her paintings, and later gifted one of her pieces to Globe Runner CEO Eric McGehearty.

We were thrilled to host Hilda and members of the public and we’re excited to be able to look at her exciting work until our next artist rotation.

To see more photos of the event, keep scrolling!

Looking Back at Our Previous Exhibition

Last October, Globe Runner held an exhibition for our previous artist: Alejandro Castanon.

It’s no surprise that mobile is super important. It’s 50 to 60 percent of most of our clients’ traffic volume these days. But, what is surprising is Google’s recent announcement that they would only look at the mobile content for search ranking purposes.

What that means is that if you have a website that your mobile site displays different content than your desktop site, Google will officially start ignoring your desktop content and only showing the mobile content.

Now, we see this a lot on clients that maybe have a “.m” or a “m.” for their mobile site, rather than having a responsive website. On the “m.”, they would have different content. Maybe stripped down content, maybe they eliminate the footer altogether.

They don’t have as big a description, which makes sense from a mobile user point of view. They want to just show you the most important things.

The challenge is if you have a bunch of links to other internal pages in your footer that aren’t showing on mobile, Google won’t be crawl those links anymore.

If you have written content describing your business, Google won’t be looking at that content as part of its search ranking algorithm.

It’ll still display your desktop version for desktop search, but even on desktop search, it’s going to use your mobile site content for ranking purposes.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and I know a lot of people in the industry think it’s an odd decision, but that’s the decision, so let’s get used to it and start updating our mobile sites.

Thanks so much reading. Feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you.

No matter how shoestring your marketing budget, you can’t afford to not invest in video marketing. Videos are highly shareable pieces of content that capture customers and encourage them to engage with your brand. In fact, marketers frequently report higher conversion rates and increased CTRs when video is used for email and social media marketing purposes.

But your customers aren’t the only ones who’ll look favorably on this rich media content. Google’s algorithms also give extra weight to video, which can ultimately help improve your site’s SEO rankings.

Ahead we’ll make some recommendations about what kind of video content to create and how to do it.

Marketing Video Inspiration

Like all content marketing, you want to use videos to speak directly to your target audience. That means uploading them strategically based on where they’ll get the most airtime.

Here are some places your video marketing content can take center stage:

• Social media accounts – make company announcements, introduce sales, or promote new products across all your social feeds. It’s like show-and-tell for your customers.
• Your landing page – websites that employ this strategy convert like crazy. Just be mindful of your load time.
• Vlogs – blog content is a proven search engine marketing technique. Supplementing the strategy with a few short vlogs (video blogs) a week could give you a serious competitive edge. Plus, you can create your own YouTube channel to syndicate the content and reach a wider network.
• Testimonials – have a handful of happy customers? Add a section of video testimonials to your site. It’s the most personal way to show prospective customers the quality of your work.

Creating Video Content

When it comes to visual content, the most important thing to remember is to keep it authentic. One great way to do that is to shoot marketing video from a smartphone. The screens are large, the resolution is high, and even Hollywood filmmakers are creating movie magic from the palms of their hands.

With the right tools in pre and post-productio, you can make it great without breaking the budget. Here are five focus points to create high-quality marketing videos:

1. Stability. Invest in a tripod or Steadicam. If you’re doing a single shot, prop your phone to the proper levels. If you’re moving around, spring for a device that can keep the video constant, even as you travel.
2. Lighting. Fluorescent lighting never did anything for anyone. If you don’t have access to or a budget for professional camera lighting, use nature’s lighting. Natural lighting can do wonders for your product videos. Golden hour (around dusk and dawn) are notoriously lovely times to shoot, but a brightly lit room with windows can work just as well.
3. Audio. It’s worth springing for a microphone, especially if you are sharing about your brand. Not only will it cut down on ambient noise, but it’ll also give your video a much more put together feel. Make sure to pick some good intro music to introduce and close your video, too. The more seamless and intentional it is, the more professional you’ll sound.
4. Background. Keep the setting interesting, but clean. An all-white background isn’t the only choice you have. Pick somewhere that demonstrates the unique quality of your brand and don’t shy away from colors, especially if they complement your logo!
5. Effects. Whether you use iMovie or software like Adobe Premier, speeding up or slowing down the frames can be an effective way to market your business. For detail shots, try a slow-mo feature. If you’re trying to condense a process try the time-lapse feature.

More and more, we’re seeing smartphones and video marketing dominate the digital landscape. Mobile demands are increasing and since phones also happen to be our most familiar medium, we’re going to continue to see video content as a go-to digital marketing trend.

Looking for a professional videographer to help you with your full-service production and promotion needs? Our marketing team will get your business ready for its close up.

If you’re going to all the trouble to produce a video and put it up on YouTube or Facebook, you want to get the most out of it. I’ve got three simple tips for you to make sure you maximize your efforts. The first one is creating a custom thumbnail.

If you look back at my old videos, you’ll see that I didn’t always do this, and, sometimes, to an embarrassing degree. I captured my very first slide as me with my mouth open, which doesn’t look very attractive.

Making a custom thumbnail is more important than just avoiding an unattractive look on your face. The other thing it does is it sells the click. It sells the user on clicking on your video, so they watch the content that you produced. That image is probably the most important thing that they’ll see.

The next one, not to undermine the value of words, is the title of your video. What that title is describes the video and, once again, sells the user on clicking on it.

Just as importantly, it also tells YouTube what the content of the video is and lets YouTube serve it up for the proper search term. Titling your video properly is incredibly important.

The last tip is native posting. A lot of people will post a video on YouTube and then copy that video and post it again on Facebook. It’s a huge mistake and it loses a lot of traffic.

Facebook actually gives a very strong preference, a 10x preference in fact, to video content that’s posted directly on Facebook. Rather than posting on YouTube and reposting it on Facebook, post it again natively on Facebook. You’ll get as much as 10x the traffic for your organic Facebook video.

With that said, if you’d like some help with your video strategy, feel free to reach out to us. We look forward to hearing from you.

One last thing, if you have any questions that you would like answered, feel free to put them in the comments. I’d love to answer them in a future video. Thanks.

This is one of my favorite questions. It’s about social media platforms and which one is the right choice for your business?

I think a few years ago, everybody thought, “Gosh, I need to be on all the social platforms.” I even remember creating profiles on hundreds of platforms just so I could be on everything. I thought that would nail it. I would have a huge audience if I were just on everything.

What I, and every other business owner, quickly realized is that being on everything does not mean you’re effective on everything. What we look for now ‑‑ and what we should have looked for then ‑‑ is how to be effective on the platforms that you choose that are right for you.

When you think about your brand, think about where your consumers are. Where are your brand advocates? Where are the folks that want to engage with you? Are they on Twitter? Maybe. Maybe not. Are they on LinkedIn? Maybe. Maybe not.

Here are some examples. In the wedding space, Pinterest is an area you need to be in. For interior design, Houzz is must‑do social media. Instagram is huge for creatives.

Where you are highly depends on what you do and what you’re trying to sell and to whom you’re selling it to. Carefully think that out, get onto that social platform, and then engage effectively on that platform. This is much better, and more effective, than scatter‑shooting across the web.

If you’d like help selecting the right social platform for your brand and setting up an engaging presence, reach out to us. We’d love to be a part of that strategy and help you engage on social.

If you’re anything like me, you love new stuff, and Amazon has really done it this time. I’m really excited about this. You may have heard about it. It’s called the “Amazon Go” store that just opened in Seattle. It will be open to the public sometime in 2017.

What does this mean? It’s kind of the blending of online and offline retail. At that store, I can walk in, grab the goods that I want, and walk right out. No checkout. No lines. Just walk out with the goods I want, and my account will be charged. All I have to have is the Amazon Go app that corresponds with it.

When you think about this, how does it impact your business? Amazon’s been well known for reducing friction in the transaction process. They’re the first ones to innovate and create the one‑click checkout, which is still an industry leading e‑commerce feature.

When we think about reducing friction, I think it really is the key to accelerating commerce. If you want to accelerate commerce in your business, start thinking about how you can reduce the friction that it takes to do business with you.

With that said, feel free to reach out to us. We’d love to look at how you can reduce friction in your business, and we’d love to do business with you.

Also, please leave in the comments any questions you might have. I’ve been doing this for a little while, and I love to answer questions about digital marketing. If you’ve got something that you’d like me to answer in a future video, leave it in the comments. I’ll look forward to reading it.

What if you could advertise on a platform that didn’t allow advertising at all? Well, that’s exactly what WATER IS LIFE did.

WATER IS LIFE is a nonprofit. It’s actually the one that my kids selected this year as part of our family Christmas. We’re going to be giving some money to their organization.

When I looked into the organization, I found this strategy and I loved it so much I wanted to do a video on it. What they did is they actually raised money through Venmo. Venmo is a micro money exchange app. It allows you to pay back a friend for pizza or something like that very easily through your phone. But, they don’t allow advertising at all.

What WATER IS LIFE did is instead of advertising on the platform, they sent people money. They literary sent them money. Now, keep in mind, they sent them one penny, but in that one penny exchange they were able to write a description of why they sent them a penny.

They sent them a penny and they said, “Here’s a penny for you,” and asked for some money back. They asked ,”Will you send some money to support clean water around the world?” Really clever marketing strategy.

I bring it up not because I want everybody to go out and send pennies and solicit funds.

I bring it up to say marketing is something that is never dead. It’s never still. It can always be innovated on. And, lastly, push yourself. Push yourself to think beyond where you’ve been before and where you can go in the future.

Thanks so much for reading. If you’d like help coming up with a unique marketing strategy for your business, give us a call. We’d love to talk to you.

Let’s get to one of my favorite subjects; artificial intelligence. I love this because I’m such a super tech nerd that I think AI is the coolest thing to talk about. It’s here. It’s real. We really have AI now.

Now, I don’t know if it thinks and feels like we do, but I’ll tell you what it will do. It will start acting as a lot of customer service behaviors will be taken over by AI.

Nowadays, you can get assistants that will manage your emails for you. I’ve got an AI on my computer that helps me write more compelling messages that I just installed a few days ago. It’s reading my text as I’m writing it and making recommendations on how I can get a response.

Wildly cool stuff, but here’s one thing that you can expect. A lot of consumer behaviors will start to be influenced by AI and what I’m here to ask you, or push you on a little bit, is are you thinking about that for your business? Because if you’re not, you will soon be behind the times.

AI is admittedly the future, but it’s a future that’s coming this year, in 2017. It’s not a future that’s long, long away, years and years from now. It’s literary rolling out this year.

I think we’ll start to see major retailers start to pick up AI in their customer service departments and start to respond to people in ways that the consumers are actually happy with and they get an accurate and quick response.

AI, remember, can gather huge amounts of information and answer consumer queries much quicker. So, be thinking about that when you’re thinking about how your business strategy is going to grow and are you going to react to AI and are you going to be able to integrate that effectively and be a market leader in your space?

Thanks so much for reading. If you’d like to brainstorm about AI a little bit, give me a call. I have fun talking about it, just because I think it’s a great subject.