For Your Inspiration

I love letter forms and playing with words… my admiration for typography is one big reason I became interested in being a designer.

Seb Lester also loves letterforms. He works in London as a type designer, illustrator and artist. He has completed typefaces and type illustrations for such big shots as Apple, Nike, Intel on the list goes on and on. His passion for letterforms and type is huge. He creates works that are very organic and ornate having masterd the skill of embellishment.

Note: In the last visual (the Van Gogh quote) the type is actually made up thousands of tiny stars!

How Google Instant Affects Search Marketing

Google Instant - the search enhancement introduced in the fall of 2010 that shows results as you type – was based on Google’s insight that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking about a tenth of the time to glance at another part of the page. With Google Instant you get to the right content much faster because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even click “Search” before getting results.

Benefits (as listed by Google) and Search Marketing Impact

Benefit: Faster Searches
Impact: Competition for shorter keyphrases
By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, there will be greater competition for shorter keyphrases. For example, as someone starts typing in your niche term ‘Chocolate marshmallow squares’ they see results for ‘chocolate’ and ‘chocolate marshmallow’ as they type in the search field and may decide to stop and take a look at results being presented along the way.

Benefit: Smarter Predictions
Impact: Keyword selection
The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need. This can actually help marketers with keyword research in that the terms that appear at the top of the list are likely the most common searches and ones you should consider using.

Benefit: Instant Results
Impact: Impression counts rise
Start typing and results appear immediately whereas until Google Instant, you had to type a full search term, select Search, and hope for the right results. Google counts any pause of three seconds or more as an impression, and so your Adwords account may see a rise in that area.

Three Tips for B2Bs Using Twitter

More B2B marketers are incorporating Twitter into their social media initiatives and may wonder how to improve their following, as well as follower interest and engagement. Here are three ways:

Use hashtags. Many Twitter users are set up to follow hashtags, for example #Brand or #Advertising, and so it's possible to acquire new followers, and exposure to those already following, by using them.

Recognize the content source. It's beneficial to include the name of the person or website that you're tweeting about, and even include a direct hyperlink to them.

Re-tweet and ask to be re-tweeted. Re-tweeting others' relevant content (as long as it's balanced with a higher rate of unique tweets), and asking others to re-tweet your unique content are both tactics that will give and gain recognition.

For Your Inspiration

I was directed to this Dutch artist, Joram Roukes, by a website called The Cool Hunter (bookmark this website now!) His work is an intense mixture of colour, textures, street art, collage, pop culture, consumerism… there's a lot going on. This stuff makes me want to break out my own paintbrushes!