Now that 2020 is here, there is a lot that needs to be done to up your social media engagement game. You will need to keep adapting to trends so that you stay ahead of the curve. But what can you actually differently this year? What strategies and/or tricks will boost your social media engagement in 2020? To find out, read on.

Not all social media strategies can bring the same type of result to businesses in different industry niches. For example, B2C businesses can benefit from Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. B2B brands on the other hand might have a better chance of performing better on LinkedIn and YouTube. This is why when it comes to agencies, you need to go for b2b social media – agency services. 

Boosting Social Media Engagement on Facebook

To get more engagement on Facebook, you should go live more often than not. According to a survey it was found that live videos performed better than the usual Facebook videos. In order for this to work, you will need to plan your video and notify your viewers beforehand. Do not forget to write a short description for your video, and give answers to questions your viewers are posting so they know they matter. Most importantly, be yourself.

Another great way to increase engagement on Facebook is by creating a private group. You may have a page for your brand, but that will not cut it. You will need a Facebook group to create a community that is all about your brand, which will in turn increase visibility and boost engagement. Just remember to keep posting, and avoid being salesy all the time.

Boosting Social Media Engagement on Instagram

When it comes to boosting social media engagement on Instagram, you will need to utilize all its features to their fullest potential. Features like mention sticker, question sticker, location tag, etc. can do wonders if you play your cards right. Use Instagram stories to keep your audience hooked as well, just be unique and fun about whatever it is that you end up posting.

To get more comments on your Instagram posts, you should post more videos, it really is that simple! Of course, people generally do not leave comments on posts on Instagram, but you can rectify that by posting more videos. Studies have shown that videos actually get more comments than the usual Instagram posts.

Boosting Social Media Engagement on Twitter

For Twitter, you will not have to do much to boost engagement. You can start with using hashtags wherever possible. Believe it or not, hashtags are a powerful way of increasing your reach and engagement. It will without a shadow of a doubt increase your exposure on Twitter. As long as you use them wisely, your Twitter account will get to the top in no time.

If you were not using GIFs before, then the fact that GIFs getting 55% more engagement on posts will get you started right away.

Other useful tips include interacting with other users’ content, retweeting whenever you are mentioned, responding to people who tweeted you, and sharing useful articles.

Boosting Social Media Engagement on LinkedIn

LinkedIn can be a bit tricky, and there is nothing to be ashamed about if you were not working extensively on this social media platform in particular. It can be intimidating, and not a lot of individuals and businesses know how to boost social media engagement on LinkedIn.

Since the social media platform has over 300 million active users, you will need to take advantage of the professional networking app, but the good news is you have the following tips to count on for phenomenal results:

• Much like Facebook, you will need to go live here often as well. As soon as you go live, your followers will be notified. Just choose a topic, any topic, and talk about it. Provide unique insight, and encourage your viewers to ask questions so that they interact with you.
• One of the best things about LinkedIn is that it has support for hashtags. So use them wherever you deem appropriate. Remember, you can’t use them sparingly like on the platforms mentioned above.

Other useful tips for boosting engagement on LinkedIn include writing LinkedIn blogs and articles, engaging with others, creating your own LinkedIn group, joining other LinkedIn groups, and the most important of them all, and sharing content that is relevant to your target audience.

Social media is a place where you can always count on your consumers to be present and active. There is absolutely no reason why you should not use this to your advantage. Reach your target audience more easily, by simply being active and responding to queries and concerns on all social media platforms. If you are not present on all social media platforms, then it is high time you create your presence.

Boosting your social media engagement really boils down to how effective you are in showing you care about your target audience. When you show them they matter, and you take their comments seriously, there is no way your social media engagement will not grow. By doing something so simple, you can actually make a big difference, so much so, that your target audience will opt for you rather than your competitors each and every time.

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Let’s start with a fun fact. The next time you look at the NBC logo, look a bit closer. If you see just a splash of six colors, look again. You might see a beak sort of thing on the purple splash. That’s because the NBC logo is actually a peacock. However, NBC’s logo wasn’t anything close to a peacock when the broadcaster introduced its first logo. The NBC logo evolution spanned over almost 100 years and has taken the shape as we know it today.

NBC logo evolution: a timeline

National Broadcasting Company, or NBC, was founded on November 15, 1926, and it is one of the oldest major television networks in the United States. It was created by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and was the first network to broadcast regular television programming. NBC has aired a wide variety of programs, with some of the most popular shows being “Saturday Night Live,” “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “The Voice,” “Law & Order,” and many more. The broadcasters are divided into many divisions, including Bravo, CNBC, E!, MSNBC, NBC, NBC News, Oxygen, SYFY, Telemundo, Universal Kids, Universo, USA Network, NBC Sports, and NBC Local Stations. The company also owns Peacock, its streaming service.

Not only this, but NBC also produces and distributes films and programs through Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Universal Studio Group. While the portfolio is nothing short of fascinating, NBC also has a glorious history of evolving from a radio network to a giant media and entertainment company. Nothing symbolizes this evolution better than the network’s logo.

The first logo: The lightning bolt era

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The first NBC and the original NBC logo is often referred to as the “NBC Radio City Microphone” logo. The iconic logo was in use during the early days of NBC, when it primarily focused on radio broadcasting. The logo, introduced in 1926, was created to symbolize the network’s commitment to quality and innovation in broadcasting. The logo was typically rendered in black and white, as color television was not yet widespread during its early years.

It featured a stylized microphone, representing the network’s association with radio broadcasting. “NBC” was written in capital letters with a map of the USA in the background.

The simplified version

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The logo which then followed, was a much-simplified version of the first logo. It was a simple square with NBC written diagonally inside it. Like the previous logo, it was also black and white, and the design had lightning bolts around the letter ‘B’.

The colored logo

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In 1943, NBC introduced its third logo. Unlike the previous two, this one had a splash of color – red lightning bolts. The design was subtle as it had a microphone in the center with NBC written on it, while the lightning bolts were placed on the left side of the microphone. On the right side, there was a different wave pattern for the television network. The meaning of the NBC logo was to indicate the company’s transition from a radio broadcaster to a TV and radio broadcaster.

Simple typography

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The following two logos were devoid of any graphics or colors. They were simple typography with NBC written in the uppercase inscription. In 1946, the company’s simple yet elegant logo featured a traditional italicized serif typeface with NBC written in black over a white background.

It was followed by the same color tones but with a different typeface. To give the logo a more modern look, the simple serif font was replaced with bold and strict sans-serif in 1952. The letters were wider with a black outline and a thick black shadow.

More colors

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Only within a year, the simple typography logo was shelved for a more colorful design in 1953. The broadcaster introduced xylophone NBC as its logo was created. The visual emblem featured a xylophone and a black mallet. The instrument was stylized with three colors – red, green, and blue. The logo symbolized NBC’s recognizable chimes played as a seven-tone sequence first played in 1927 and became instantly recognizable with the broadcaster.

Here’s what Justin Peters, the executive creative director of Carbone Smolan Agency, says about the chimes:

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The peacock appears

In 1956, the iconic peacock made its first appearance. The bands of colors were used to signify the channel’s color broadcasting capabilities. It was created by NBC logo designer John Graham. The logo has 11 colored segments topped with red, blue, yellow, orange, and green appearing twice, while purple appears once. Each segment was topped with a drop of a contrasting color. The iconic peacock body stood in the center with a partial profile, with a head plume in white color. The appearance and centrality of the bird were reduced in the late iteration of the logo.

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As a symbol, the peacock became associated with NBC. In the coming years, it was used as a logo for the broadcaster’s other subsidiaries as well. The brand and the logo became so interchangeable that the company named its streaming service Peacock. While in future redesigns, the peacock was shelved as a logo for a few years, but it never retired.

Back to typography

In 1959, the company surprisingly shunned colors and went back to typography only. NBC was written in the appearance of a snake. The resemblance was so conspicuous it was named “NBC Snake”. It was a combination of wordmark and mid-century corporate branding. NB was nested above C in a thin black font on a white background. The logo was also designed by John Graham.

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According to Steve Heller, the broadcaster changed the logo as it was apparently having an identity crisis while competing with its rivals like CBS and ABC.

The big N

The NBC Snake persisted till 1975, after which the logo underwent another redesign. This time, NBC chose a big N as its logo. It was designed by Lippincott & Margulies and Dolphin Productions (TV) and showcased red, white, and blue for the color scheme.

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The design featured two trapezoids placed side by side. The color schemes featured a red trapezoid, while the blue one was placed inverted to the red trapezoid over a white background. This logo served as NBC’s face for only a short while due to legal challenges. In 1976, Nebraska ETV filed a trademark infringement case against NBC. The broadcaster settled the matter out of court and gave new equipment worth $800,000 to Nebraska ETV, along with a payment of $55,000 to cover the cost of a new logo. After the settlement, NBC was allowed to keep trapezoids as its logo, but the company decided to move on and bring the peacock back.

Peacock returns

In 1979, the NBC logo evolution continued, and it saw some more changes. The broadcaster kept some elements of the trapezoid logo and fashioned it with the peacock logo NBC used in the past. The outline of both trapezoids denoting “N” was kept in the background in blue color. It was overlaid with the peacock in the foreground. This iteration of the peacock was different than the one used as a logo from 1956 – 1975.

While in the previous logo, the peacock was a more distinct imagery in contrast to the color palettes, this time, the bird’s body was amalgamated with the bands of colors. The color combinations were also altered. In the previous logo, purple appeared only once. This time blue was featured only one time in the center, and all other colors had two palettes – used as feathers – placed opposite each other. This looked as if the feathers mirrored each other. The color of the bird’s outline matched with the outline of N in the background. The head plume was also made more imposing. The logo got the nickname “Proud N” because the peacock was holding its head high in the logo.

Improved peacock

The peacock is still the broadcaster’s logo, but it has seen at least three redesigns since 1979. The previous logo stayed for around 7 years when, in 1986, the company felt the need for a redesign. The logo was simplified, and the number of feathers was reduced from 11 to only six. Each color appeared just once. The N outline was removed from the background and the peacock. The peacock was now looking towards the right as compared to the left side in the previous logo. The head plume was removed, and the body was made slimmer. The bird was perched over the “NBC” logotype.

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This logo lasted for the longest time without any redesign before it was simplified in 2010. The design upgrade gave a modern look to the logo and gave it a three-dimensional effect. The visual appeal was made more metallic with a sharper color and grey fill between the feathers and the logo’s outline. The logotype was completely removed, and the bird became the standalone logo.

In another iteration in 2013, the logo was given a glossier look, and the NBC logotype was placed at the bottom of the peacock once again. In the most recent modification, the logo was made two-dimensional with a minimalistic look, similar to that in 1986. The logotype was thicker in a modern geometric sans-serif font.

Conclusion

For some, the NBC logo evolution and the constant changes were due to the broadcaster’s quest for its distinct identity. But, for others, it was the channel’s struggle to change with time and appear on par with its competitors. However, the current NBC logo is the perfect example of how logo designs could be used to convey messages – like the company’s business model, motto, ideology, or identity. The six-colored feather in the NBC peacock logo depicts the company’s different sections: yellow is for the news section, orange for sports, red for entertainment, purple for the radio, blue for the network, and green for production.

Launching a startup or running a small business? You must be aware of how vital graphic design is in building a company. You may also have an idea of how costly graphic design projects can be.
Almost 70% of small business are willing to pay $500 while 18% would pay up to $1000 for logo designing.

It takes just 400 milliseconds to our visual cortex to process the visual elements of a logo. This is essentially the time you have to capture (or lose) the attention of your customers.

For this reason, business owners should have a working knowledge of designs. This way, they have greater control over their brand’s appearance.

And the first and major graphic design product is developing a logo. A logo is more than just a color and font. On a deeper level, it reflects your brand’s personality. Logo design then is the process in which you communicate your brand’s personality to your consumers.

Considering there are several types of logos (abstract, emblem, word mark, etc.), how do you go about choosing the best one for your business? Continue reading to find out.

Consider Logo Design Types

There are 7 types of logo designs:
• Abstract
• Mascot
• Combination mark
• Emblem
• Lettermark
• Pictorial mark
• Wordmark

Abstract logos are not only imaginative, but they can immediately communicate what your business is all about. The DropBox logo, for example, is a blue colored box conveying the idea of safe data storage. However, there is always a chance of being too abstract with these logos.

Mascots are usually used by sports teams. Such logos are visually appealing, using images of animals, people or even imaginary things to represent the brand. Michelin Man is an example where a brand has positioned itself with a mascot logo.

Then there is the pictorial mark, aiming to convey the brand through an image. Examples include Twitter, Nike and Target. These logos are often used by global companies to achieve consistency in branding.

The complete opposite of pictorial mark is wordmark. Coca Cola is a major example. Lettermarks are also text-based, used to highlight companies with acronyms, like IBM. However, if you want the best of both worlds, you can go for combination mark, like Dunkin’ donuts or Baskin Robbins.

Emblem logos likewise combine design elements with text. Examples of this style include Mastercard and Harley Davidson.

Pick the Right Font

Typography or simply the choice of font goes a long way in establishing your vibe. When choosing fonts, you have to three main options:

• Serif

Serif fonts established trust. Think newspapers or academic journals. You find such fonts being used to share quotes, and there’s data to show that readers actually gauge the trustworthiness of a quote by the font used. So go for serif fonts if you want to create a professional image for your company. The downside is that such fonts can also make your logo look outdated. A major brand using a serif font logo is Gap.

• Sans Serif

San serif fonts are all over the internet. Even Google has a san serif logo. These fonts give off a clean, modern look. They are easy to read as well. You can use a sans serif font to create a fresh, new personality for your business. The downside is that you may end up looking like other companies. It is hard to stand apart with a sans serif logo unless you’re Google!

• Script Fonts

Finally, script fonts can be used to create an elegant, creative or even a casual image for your business. However, these fonts can be difficult to read.
Of course, you can always use more than one font in your logo.

Choose the Best Color

Finally, colors are also integral to projecting your business personality. According to a survey, 80% of consumers believe that color increases brand recognition. Colors are cool because they convey emotion:

• Red represents excitement, boldness, and youthfulness
• Orange represents confidence, happiness and friendliness
• Yellow gives off warmth, clarity and positive vibes
• Green stands for peace, health, and abundance
• Purple exudes creativity, wit, and imagination

Likewise, a combination of black and white can denote calm and balance. Blue, on the other hand, evokes trust and strength. In fact, more than 30% of the top 100 brands use the color blue in their logo. Gap, for instance, uses navy blue, whereas Google has a brighter blue. Research also shows that people find color combinations in similar hues appealing.

This again ties back to your brand personality. Once you know what kind of image you want to portray, you can experiment with different designs, fonts and colors to discover the right logo for your business.

If you have launched a start-up or you are running your business for a couple of years, you already know the necessity of digital marketing.

For many business owners, the mere thought of a digital marketing campaign seems terrifying because of big words like ‘keyword research’, ‘competitor analysis’, ‘buyer persona, ‘journey mapping’, ‘user intent’, ‘SEO’, ‘PPC’, ‘Google Analytics’ etc.

Of course, a full-fledged campaign requires both time and expertise. But that doesn’t mean you should delay creating your digital presence.

In the following paragraphs, we will list down some effective digital marketing tips that you can apply immediately.

#1 Engage Customers on Social Media

One of the first things that a company must do today is leveraging brand awareness on social platforms. A great way to engage your audience on each platform is to customize your messaging. This means you must avoid sharing tweets on Facebook!

Of course, it takes longer to create unique posts or Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, but it’s worth it.

Also, discover which platforms your target market uses and restrict your efforts to them. For example, there’s no use creating content for LinkedIn if most of your prospects hang out on Instagram.

#2 Leverage Video

There are several avenues for engaging with your tribe though video. Consider Facebook Live or Instagram and SnapChat stories. You can sit down and create a short video on your phone, announcing a new product update, share industry news or answer questions. With a little bit of editing, you will have good enough video content to add value to your website, blog or social media profiles.

#3 Start A Blog

Publishing creative content regularly is not just good for SEO (see point #5), but it also improves brand engagement and provides value to your audience. One of the best ways to publish regularly is to start a blog.

If you are in business, chances are you know more about your product, service and industry than the average person. You can create blog articles to educate prospects, answer their questions, and just be generous with your content. As engagement increases, conversions will follow suit.

#4 Repurpose Your Content

One of the key benefits of blogging is that in time, you create a library of useful content. This, in turn, makes it easy to develop social media posts and video scripts. This is known as repurposing or repackaging content. You can also turn your blog posts into infographics, which are known to increase engagement.

Repurposing has dual benefits. On the one hand, you’re creating new content for different platforms with very little effort. On the other hand, you are providing tailored content to your audience, boosting your branding efforts.

#5 Optimize your Website

Creating a website is a must for your digital presence, but it’s not enough. You need to ensure that your website ranks high on search engines to increase visitors. SEO, like all digital marketing processes, requires a particular set of skills, but you can at least optimize your website for high-ranking keywords.

There are free tools available for keyword research. You can also look for specific words and phrases that your audience uses by looking at Google search bar suggestions. Once you have decided on the keywords, you can naturally incorporate them in your page title, the header tag, meta tags, and meta descriptions.

#6 Improve User Experience

User experience refers to how people engage with your brand through websites, mobile apps, social media etc. Elements of good user experience include tailored content, relevant communication channels and an intuitive user-interface (UI).

So before launching your website, see how fast it loads. When creating your business profile on Facebook, leverage chat bots. And when publishing a new blog, tweak your content for simplicity and a reader-friendly tone.

Paying attention to these details results in smooth user experience.

#7 Test, Test and Test Some More

Finally, there are a dozen forms of digital marketing and a hundred ways of executing them. How do you know which one is right for you?

The answer is testing. Lots of testing.

Even if you have just started with your digital effort, you need to pay attention to numbers. Which pages of your website get the most traffic? Which ones have the greatest engagement? What is your average post reach on Facebook? How many people click the links at the end of each blog post?

Ultimately, it’s all about testing and adapting, finding out what works and screening out what doesn’t.

Writing great content is not very difficult. In fact, all it requires is a bit of hard work as well as a dash of creativity to get the job done right, the very first time over.

An important step in any content writing 101 guide is to get the facts right.
After all, if you do not have anything of value to add to a conversation, than it will simply lead to your article or blog being considered ‘click bait.’

And here it is pertinent to note that Google and other common search engines are a whole lot smarter than ever before. Various algorithms will effectively ensure that you ‘never’ end up in the top 10 or the ‘holy grail’ of search engine results.

What Does Content Writing Mean?

It is basically concerned with the creation of value based content that will be consumed online. If done correctly, it will decrease the bounce rate substantially. ‘Bounce rate’ is when a person comes to the site and finding nothing of interest, he closes it or in other words ‘bounces’ off.’ A good content writer will not only enthrall his audience, but he will also make good and sure that there are sufficient keywords to attract the relevant traffic to the site.

Here it is pertinent to note that blog content writing is somewhat different from creative content writing. The words and sentences of the former are smaller and easily digestible to a large audience. When writing creative content, you have to remember that you are in a race against time.

If you make the slightest mistake about your sentence structure, overall length, and verbosity, the target audience will lose their interest and click off the site. After all, it only takes just a swipe of the finger to do so!

However, content writing pros really know their jobs well, and they keep their target audience visiting their site.

Understanding Your Target Market

Here it is vital to understand that all content generation strategies needs must take into consideration the specific personal preferences of the target audience itself. That is, what are the demographics as well as the psychographics of the target audience you are trying to attract. For example. If you are into sports shoes in Perth, it will not make sense to pepper your articles on Bitcoins (for instance).

In a nutshell, you will have to customize your content and ensure that it is relatable to your audience’s personal preferences.

Headlines are important

We all know that headlines are important. The chances are that many ‘digital marketing content specialists’ continue to write reams and reams of their blogs and favorite articles. And they do not even understand the fact that it not always the body text of the content that actually catches the eye, but the headline.
In other words, if you can capture the imagination of your reader right from the word go (so to speak), then he will be hooked sufficiently well enough to read the whole thing. And once he does so, he will enter the marketing funnel. That is, he will take the first steps towards doing whatever it is you have created the website for. Such as generating interest in the second world wear (for instance) or trying to buy/sell a particular product. This is why you must always try to go for a really eye-catching headline whenever and wherever you can.

Avoid Errors as Much as Possible

Spelling and grammatical errors are just plain off-putting. If you make enough of those, then your target audience will think that not only are you bereft of any knowledge regarding the subject matter, but you are bereft of any knowledge. Period! Typos are the bane of any well written blog or article, and you should try and run them through any online grammar and syntax correcting tool of you can.

Do Your Research

If you are going to write an authoritative article or blog, it makes sense to have the required knowledge for the task at hand. Otherwise, you will just come off as a ‘wanna be’ writer who is trying to write about stuff that he does not know anything about.

And this is not like the dark ages when you have to go to a library to find data. A simple Google search will land all the data at your fingertips, and you would just need to put it all together, properly enough.

Conclusion

Ultimately these website content writing tips will generate plenty of organic traffic to your site. Apart from that, they will also go a long way in making sure that you can actually retain the core interest of your target market. So that they keep coming back to you again and again.

Our good old Facebook started off as a local website in a college student’s dormitory room. However, as of today, it is a globe straddling colossus with literally billions of active online users. It also has a significant influence on the global stage.

However, the history of Facebook is certainly a really interesting story. Let us take a closer look at its admittedly illustrious life story, while simultaneously looking at the platform’s famous and indeed iconic logo. We will also see how it has played a key role in making Facebook, the social media platform, the undisputed ruler of online social cyberspace.

Facebook: Its history and its origins

In 2003, a student in his sophomore year of college at Harvard University named Mark Zuckerberg came to his dorm. He quickly created an online social media platform known as Face Mash.” Here, Harvard students would be able to see two pictures of their fellow students juxtaposed to each other. They also got to vote which one was the most attractive of the two. Needless to say, the administration was not amused, and the website was quickly taken down as per varsity orders. As for Mark, he was lucky he was not permanently expelled from this institution. However, the seeds of the Facebook platform had now been planted.

A year later, an undaunted and unrepentant Mark decided to create his own version of an online directory of Harvard students. He called this as yet nascent directory “TheFacebook.”
Within a week of the launch of the site, he ran into controversy after he was accused by three fellow Harvard students of pretending that he was actually going to help them build a website called HarvardConnection.com.

However, according to them, he used all of their ideas to build his own competitor website. The trio of students than proceeded to contact Crimson – the local varsity newspaper. There was an investigation after that. However, “TheFacebook” became wildly popular on campus. As a matter of fact, within only the first month, almost half of all undergraduate students who were enrolled at Harvard university had their own separate accounts on the website.

At the initial level, the membership on “TheFacebook” platform had been strictly limited only to Harvard students. However, Zuckerberg soon decided to open his platform to students of Stanford, Yale, and even Columbia varsity. Shortly after that, the membership of this network based platform was subsequently opened up to include all of the ivy league schools around and eventually to the public at large.

Later in the same year, the Facebook platform was duly incorporated and a certain Sean Parker who was one of Mark’s informal advisors when he was in the process of actually building the website – was declared as the president of the company. Shortly after that, the platform dropped the “The” from its name. To make the transition successful, the company paid over $200,000 to buy the domain facebook.com.

Facebook remained a fully private company up till 2012. In that year, the company went on to hold its IPO or initial public offering. The company’s stock has been able to perform very well even as Facebook thrives and continues to increase its active user base and as it also increased its profits and revenues through advertising. As of now, the company continues to excel in the corporate sector due to its very high profitability ratios.

Now let us see the role, that Facebook’s hugely popular logo has played in making the company such a runaway success, and let us also study Facebook logo history, as well.

The Facebook logo today

Once it was clear that Facebook was going to become a global success, Mark Zuckerberg and president Sean Parker went on to hire Mike Buzzard of the Cuban Council to design an absolutely wonderful logo for the as yet nascent company.

The logo that Mike had designed is those far off days is to this day almost identical to the platform’s current logo. In fact, if you were to juxtapose Facebook’s original logo with Facebook’s new logo, you will quickly see that the company has decided to make very minor changes over the years.

Interestingly, the Facebook logo color scheme had been chosen because of a certain vision condition that Mark suffers from. It is called deuteranopia. This is a mild form of color blindness.

The person finds it difficult to distinguish between certain colors. But the one color that even a deuteranopia sufferer can easily see and distinguish is blue.

Unlike the evolution of Facebook features, the logo itself has differed little from its older iterations. In fact, so minor are the changes that to the average layman, it will be very difficult to even discern them, unless you are looking for them, that is.

This is because the Facebook platform has stuck by its usual simplicity as well as recognizability, at least as far as their logo is concerned. They have opted to keep it as stable as possible. Especially after vectoring in the many changes of the platform. In fact, the website as it was in 2005 (for instance) is now almost completely different from its origins. While the logo, as well as the central blue and white color scheme, have remained (more or less) the same, but the site itself has undergone a steady evolution regarding its myriad features.

Conclusion

In light of the above, we can safely conclude that the Facebook platform is highly popular for two reasons. The simplicity and recognizability of its logo and its ability to evolve with the times.

Brands and logos have been the unique identifying marks for companies and products alike, since ages past. Just like Nike has their truly iconic ‘tick mark’ logo and their equally well known slogan “just do it” so too have their rival sports brand “Adidas “ gone out of their way to create a unique look and logo that would remain in the minds of their target audience.

Let us take a closer look at Adidas’s association with the Vegas Golding Knights team and their logo:

The Golden Knights of Vegas

Bill Foley paid a grand total $500 million to the All-American NHL (national Hockey League) for the successful acquisition of the Vegas team. However, the purchase was only the beginning, and the most important task was to come up with a one hundred percent new branding strategy that had to include a new logo, a new name, and of course all-new colors, as well.

This extremely important task was entrusted to Adidas since they are no strangers to fashion brand logos. With plenty of branding and logo design experience under their belt, they set about creating a new brand for a team that did not even exist. Moreover, they had a very small window of time due to the up and coming season. This was both a huge task and an even bigger responsibility.

As far as brands and logos are concerned, they really need to make sure that they would create a dedicated fan following with the Vegas Golden Knights logo. Ergo, for the brand logo design to resonate with its target audience, viz. its fan base.

Ultimately, it’s a sponsorship game, and a dedicated sports following is the single most important aspect of any sport since it helps to bring in more funds and sponsors.

The Owners Ideas

Bill had his own ideas regarding the best brand logos around. He basically wants to associate his newly purchased team’s name as well as its logo with his own time and service in the American Army.

He specifically wanted to call his team “The Black Knights.” This is because it was the very same name that is used by the US army uses for their sports team. If you look at it from Foley’s point of view, it made sound sense. He wanted to appeal to the patriotic ardor amongst the people of Vegas. He thought that associating the name with the American army will automatically result in an enhanced fan following all across the sport.

While being factually correct to an extent, the term black was not deemed positive by many people. In fact, the current branding and logo design is a joint collaboration with the Golden Knights’ operations team, the owner as well as their marketing team too.

As a matter of fact, the new logo actually tells an enthralling visual story of the meaning behind their new name. Here, the core goal was to try and align the whole of the team with a more modern looking yet aesthetic logo that would also simultaneously resonate with the sport’s local fan base in the city of Las Vegas. This was a truly unique approach as it allows the residents of the town to think of the team as one of their very own.

As a matter of fact, the first part of their by now well-known name, “Golden,” has been derived from the narrative and history that has spurred the settlement of the state of Nevada.

From those humble beginnings, it has also gone on to describing the sheer opulence of Las Vegas as it exists today. This has a lot to do with the fact that this state currently remains one of the largest producers of pure gold within the continental United States. The second part of their name, “Knights,” had been chosen because it has always represented the ideals for which had been created – courage, valor, and victory.

These seminal concepts regarding such naming protocols and brand logo design were based off countless brainstorming sessions between the owner of the team’ Bill Foley and the creative team as Adidas.

The Myth of the Black Knight!

The original Black Knight was Zawisza Czarny. He was a graduate of West Point, and he served as a wonderful inspiration for Foley due to his disregard for personal safety and self-sacrifice.

The designers at Adidas started off with a knight’s helmet to serve as a simple yet bold a representation of the new NBL team. After that, their team decided to add some really subtle nuances that also spoke to the team’s Las Vegas hometown.

In fact, the outline of a “V” can be seen to be sitting firmly in the center of the knight’s helmet. This V represents “Vegas” and also serves as the real face of the helmet and by extension, the team that carries this logo.

The Age of Heraldry

Through further research in ancient folklore, the creative team at Adidas found that the use of certain patterns, colors, and symbols on medieval shields had a specific meaning. They revealed details through which lords and kingdom may be seen by friends and enemies, alike.

This is why the creative team then decided to try and place their knight helmet on a shield. This logo was the perfect way to go about crafting a logo that was able to “represent” the city of Las Vegas in the truest sense.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, we can easily see that the primary logo today features a distinct grey color. This is the color of the armor of olden day Knights, and it retains its original dark and steely look. All in all. A truly amazing combination.

Launching just about any new website can turn out to be a singularly daunting task. And as the precious weeks turn to months, you feel that you are losing out on different opportunities and become really frustrated.

However, instead of feeling overwhelmed, you should try and treat your just website like any other brick and mortar business. That is, a site that is constantly changing and growing, and it is based on exactly how your potential customers may respond to your marketing strategies.

Remember, your website doesn’t have to be excellent the very minute you hit the publish icon. It is a good idea to follow a few important guidelines to ensure that you are launching a site that is not just secure but also easy to use. After all, your website has to be absolutely full of useful information.

Let us check this 10 step checklist to see what you need to do to create that perfect website:

Step One: Set a Prospective Site Launch Date

Once you have chosen your launch date, it is time to buckle down and really go to work! You must always keep track of how the work is progressing, and you should also tell other people about your new site and when it will be up and operational. Once the domain has been registered, you can also place a ‘coming soon” place holder.

Step Two: Pick A Nice Web Building Software

A quick search engine search will easily show that there are many options when it comes to choosing any specific website platform. This is why it is important to do your due diligence and research so that you will be able to find that one fits in your budget and suits your needs. You also need to look at your business needs and the technical skills and website preferences of your users.

Step 3: Choose a Really Nice Domain Name

The domain name you choose is the central location of your online address. I.e., it is what appears in the address bar of the web browser whenever a visitor comes to your website. For example, any custom and personalized domain (e.g., www.mybusiness.com) will also help the business look highly reputable to the visitor.

Step 4: Pick A Good Hosting Service Provider

You will definitely need to choose a specific hosting server and service provider for your website.

In fact, the relevance of this step in your website evaluation checklist cannot be over emphasized. This is because it is absolutely critical in maintaining the site. If you get a cheap and unreliable host, you will be vulnerable to long blackouts and periods where your website will remain unavailable.

Step 5: Focus on The End User’s Experience

The user experience, or UX for short, is a central component of your whole website. It relates to two distinct but equally important elements: navigation and design.

Your website should be very easy to navigate, and the visitor should feel that he is at home. Furthermore, the design should be esthetically pleasing and eye catching as well. This holds ever more true for a mobile website as well as an online business too. Every individual page should focus on how it can help the customer solve a problem, or it should focus on imparting knowledge and value addition to the target audience.

Step 6: A Consistent Feel and Look Is of Supreme Importance

If you have a blue page in your ‘about us’ section and a green one in “our team’ than it will jar the eye. You already have your logo in place, all you need is a theme, and that will come only with consistency in color and design.

Step 7: You Simply Must Create Compelling Content

The age old adage ‘content is king’ holds as true today as it ever did before. As a matter of fact, from important meta keywords all the way to value addition to attracting organic traffic, it’s always good content that comes to the rescue of even a moribund website.

Your content must be SEO friendly. That is, it should be optimized for search engines so that it will make it to the top ten of the popular search engines.

Step 8: Test It for Usability

If your site is not user-friendly, people will not be interested in staying long, and they will ‘bounce. It should be readable; the pictures should be clearly legible and not too small, and it should come packed with a host of features that can enable the user to share it on his social media walls and accounts.

The website audit checklist should also include how it can work with mobile phones since they are now supplanting notebooks and PCs.

Step 9: Always Try and Keep the Site as Secure as Possible

Safety and security, especially for an online business website, are of extreme importance. The site should also have all relevant HTTPS and SSL certificates. This holds true even if it is not geared towards an online cash transaction platform.

Step 10: You Should Sign Up for Analytic Software such as Google Analytics

Such a platform will easily let you know who is visiting your site and when. This way, you will be able to keep track of your target audience and also make sure that your bounce rate remains low. If it becomes high, you can take steps to decrease it. All of this is only possible if you are constantly analyzing your site.

Conclusion

In light of the above, we can safely conclude that the above 10 step website audit checklist is absolutely imperative if you want to make a successful and popular website.

Keyword research is a process where you identify popular terms that people search for on search engines like Bing, Google, and so on. These keyword search terms are then incorporated into content, so that it ranks higher on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Keyword search analysis is an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The entire process involves choosing topics for your content that focuses on specific keywords for which you want your content to rank.

How to Research Keywords

In order to decide what keywords may work best work for your business, you need to identify your buyer’s journey and buyer personas. The buyer’s journey is important for numerous teams in your organization; its usefulness is not limited to the marketing team alone. For instance, your sales team might find it a lot easier to determine what approach works best for your potential customers.

There is no doubt each user has their own unique journey, but finding out as much about their goals, intent, and demographics provides you with countless keyword ranges. This is also why it is important to work on a content map, as it helps you plot your buyer’s journey and buyer personas on a map, giving you valuable insight about what content you are missing out on.

Once you have clearly defined personas, plan for the keywords you want to rank for and those you already rank for.

A simple process to follow would be the PIE method; which stands for Protect, Improve, and Expand.

• Protect

This portion is primarily concerned with keywords you already rank for — keep them locked as they are. This includes keywords associated with your product or service.

• Improve

Here, you deal with opportunity keywords. Your rank can lie anywhere between second to tenth on Google search result pages, these “low hanging fruit” keywords can be tweaked to increase authority.

• Expand

Finally, and most importantly, this portion deals with opportunity terms that fare well in PPC, but have little to no visibility in organic. These keywords have a low probability of ranking on the top ten pages on Google.

To optimize your SEO strategy further, integrating a SERP API can provide a more accurate analysis of keyword rankings, search engine results, and competitor performance, helping you refine your approach and stay ahead of the competition.

Search Engine Keyword Research Best Practices

If you lack SEO keyword search, it is high time you take the necessary steps to up your game before you lose to your competition. To aid you in your endeavor, here are some keyword research best practices for you to consider.

Capitalize on Trending Topics

There is no need to complicate things. Sometimes, you do not need strategies or campaigns with unique content.

All you need to do is to check on the latest trends. Don’t overthink it, but it takes time to create relevant and fresh content.

Improve Your PPC Performance

Most companies think they can throw money at a problem to make it go away. Due to this, they only solve their problems by throwing their money at it, which means they have lesser finances to experiment with.

What these companies do not understand is that it is not money that is important, it is time. Marketers simply do not have the time to guess what keywords are going to work. To solve this, they can use Google to provide those much needed keywords.

You can start searching for keywords using a service or product name. Look for related keywords for relevance. Look for keywords that are pretty close, but something that is much more popular.

Once you have found enough keywords, load them into Google Ads.

Analyze Your Competition

When it comes to SEO, the idea is to outdo your competition on search engine results — find who your competitors actually are. You will also need to find out how they rank for keywords that you want to target.

To find out more about your competition and their strategies, you can use tools like SEMrush’s Position Tracker. Simply enter your competitors’ URLs, and the tool compares your rankings with those of your competition.

There are many tools that not only provide you with organic keyword results, but Google Ads as well. This way you can see what keywords are used by your competition for their ads.

Pick the top three competitors and analyze their strategies off-site and on-site. Look at their Meta titles and Meta descriptions. Check out what sites are linked back to them. See how well their pages are structured.

Use Keywords in the Right Places

Keywords need to be incorporated into the headings, Meta titles, and Meta descriptions on your page. They must be used appropriately, throughout your written content.

Think of it this way: every web page is an optimization opportunity — do not just focus on your homepage.

While optimizing each and every page on your website, target 2-3 keywords for each page. Of course, this means you need to plan what keyword phrases will be used on which pages.

Writing unique content around keyword phrases is an art. For this reason, be careful about the words you use and how you use them for maximum search ability and readability.

Keep in mind, keyword research is not a list of boxes you need to tick off. Take it seriously as a consistent and comprehensive activity for your next big marketing idea.

Use keyword research to constantly tweak your strategies based on what your customers search for. Then all you need to do is to figure out how you can do an even better job than your competitors to give them what they want.