Why you SHOULD judge a package by its design!

If you’ve ever searched your local store shelves and seen products with packaging that seemed obnoxious, overwhelming, or even too plain, you understand the importance of product packaging design.

The packaging design is like the face of your product.

It is the first thing consumers see about your product. Whether your packaging leaves your product visible or invisible, your packaging continues to play an important role in how consumers view your product before opening it. If consumers are disconnected by your product packaging, chances are they won’t buy it and will never discover the importance of your actual product.

Unless you are a graphic designer, it is best to leave the product package design and printing of your products to the specialists who do this for a living.

Letting a graphic designer design your package allows you to have attractive, easy-to-read and informative packaging.

Graphic designers understand what works in each industry and know how to get the most out of their packaging to attract the attention of consumers, as well as hold their attention for more than a few seconds.

Shelves are full of competition, so having a leg up on shelf space and consumer attention is important.

Advertising message on the package

Die Cutting your product label also serves as a printed message for consumers.

It’s what gives consumers an idea of what your product is and how it works without having to read the fine print or read the instructions thoroughly. Consumers want to be able to take a look at a product and be able to understand what it is and how it works in seconds.

If it takes more than a few seconds, consumers are likely to move on to the next product on the shelf.

Competition is too fierce and time is too short for most consumers to make choosing a product a long process.

Since your time is so short to capture the attention of consumers, as well as to hold their attention, it is important to use the best possible product package design.

The best way to ensure that you are using the best is to use a graphic designer who has helped various industries and understands what works and what does not work when it comes to packaging design.

It is not worth leaving your product to chance with poor packaging design – use the experts and give your product what it deserves.

Here’s why personal branding is so important!

Having a personal Branding reputation is very important to keep a job, to find it, or even for others to change their perception of you. Personal marketing is about forging an identity that is based on your skills, knowledge, and projects to achieve differentiation.

What is personal branding?

It is the set of attitudes and strategies to be able to sell yourself to a company, a social group or to promote your services or products. That is, it is the process of creating, managing and communicating a brand or yourself.

Each of your actions projects an image of you. Therefore, each of the messages you sent by your actions, must be cared for as a well-defined strategy to achieve its goal.

The importance of “selling” yourself

The personal brand is of great help during your professional career, because it values your skills and knowledge. If you are immersed in a selection process, your brand will make you stand out from your competition, who this time will be other candidates for the position. A good brand image will speed up the selection process. Sell yourself as a professional.

What works is the perception that others have about you and you must send the messages carefully and correctly. Use the different channels that technology offers you and generate your own quality content. Work on your brand to define the image you want to convey and, the more it resembles reality, the better it will be for you.

Those professionals who have designed and know how to project a brand image, have the possibility of accessing positions with better outcomes.

Personal marketing

Thanks to personal branding you can have more opportunities, but it is also important to know that, if you are working independently or for a company, you must take care of your image and, above all, what others perceive of you. In all professions, there are references that inspire others. If you also want to be a benchmark in your field, you need to work on your personal brand.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or a corporate employee, you need to take care of your image to obtain the approval of users and customers.

Sure you worry about taking care of the products, but you are the first product of your company and you must take care of yourself as much as you take care of any other aspect of the production chain or the customers themselves. If you want a user to buy your company’s products, offer them confidence, security and actively listen to them. All these are characteristics that you must take care of every time they have noticed you. You must show them your professionalism so that they continue to trust you.

A company can close or you may change your career path, but, if you are the person with the best image of a company, surely you are not short of very tempting proposals.

Branding is a kind of resume

Talk and write about what you can do. That will let companies looking for talent know that you exist. You need to gain visibility and notoriety if you want to have new job opportunities.
If you work on your personal brand, you can achieve the success you seek, turn your life around and work on what you have always wanted. Do not forget that this article is an excellent way to add value and create a community of followers.

Which Social media platform will dominate the market in 2022?

The social media platform that will dominate in 2022 have one major thing: it provides an approach to connect with public figures or favorite brands on a more personal level.

The preference of consumption in social media platforms has changed with the passage of time and the pandemic. The covid-19 pandemic caused people to stay at home to avoid the spread of the virus, resulting in a greater number of users connecting to social media platforms and streaming platforms.

Different companies choose to use different social media platforms to achieve their objectives (depending on their products or services) since not any platform is as efficient as another.

Despite this, new social media platforms have shown their evolution and favoritism on the part of consumers, due to the new consumer experiences they provide, but which ones will dominate the market in 2022?

We all know that there are certain social media platforms that have been predominant in the market for years, however, during the pandemic different platforms exploded in popularity and managed to position themselves effectively and show their exponential growth, so if you are not in them, it would be worth getting involved to be able to elaborate new marketing strategies; So…without further ado; here are the social networks that will dominate in 2022.

Facebook

It is not news that Facebook will continue to be the giant of social media platforms since it continues to be the most used social network in the world, with more than 2.2 billion active users per month. Thanks to the fact that this platform is one of the ones with the greatest possibilities of content creation, it will continue to show itself as a leader.

Twitch as a social media platform ?

This streaming platform has managed to demonstrate its importance within the internet community and its characteristics make it one of the platforms that should be targeted to carry out new marketing strategies. This platform allows us to create different content that was of particular interest to users during the pandemic. Its effectiveness lies in the fact that we can enjoy various contents that show us a closer side between influencer and user, achieving greater connectivity by having the opportunity to carry out daily interactions even with public figures.

Twitter

Twitter has been effective in the face of new trends, in addition to its latest updates and future plans with new functions, will allow it to have even more support from the influencer and content creator community, since it will support them with the possibility of monetization (even with Bitcoins), creation of audio content, in addition to providing financial, technical and marketing support. Twitter will grow its level of influencers membership during 2022.

TikTok

TikTok has achieved a user increase of 60% in 2019, in 2020 the app was already downloaded more than 14 million times and is currently the seventh most used social network in the world.

The user has shown his comfort in front of this platform since it is ideal to be entertained for short periods of time due to its short videos, easily viral, and showing thousands of people making content that you are looking for. This platform will continue to grow and will become one of the social networks that will dominate during 2022.

Instagram

The platform most used by influencers worldwide will continue in trend thanks to its image and video format, where brands and other idols are present. In addition, its reels have shown effectiveness in the acceptance of content, however, this will not have exponential growth during 2022 unless it opts for some new update.

How Graphic Design is Crucial in Today’s Business?

In today’s competitive Graphic Design market, a business has to do everything possible to stand out from its competitors. For this reason, it is essential to have a perfectly defined company identity (from the logo to the website).

Let us begin with the basics; What is graphic design?

It is a process of combining images and text for communication purposes. In other words; it is the art of merging different elements that result in an effective message. In short, it is a very creative technique for the transmission of ideas.

What benefits does graphic design bring to your company?

Graphic design helps to optimize your brand communication; that is to say, it looks for the best way to communicate. Keep in mind that a brand with a well-shaped image will:

1- Differentiate your company from the competition.

2- Improve the concept of your business.

3- Attract customers.

4- Add value to your company.

5- Help identify your business.

Why is graphic design important?

Corporate identity is what makes the first impression that the client has of your business. Remember that, as the saying goes, “we don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.” This is why an unattractive or not too intuitive design can determine the success or failure of your website.

What can a specialized company do for you?

Even if you have the basic tools and knowledge to defend yourself, it is true that a professional in the field is capable of doing what you do … but better. It is advisable for each person to dedicate themselves to what they really like and do well, leaving the rest of the tasks to experts in the sector. Thus, a graphic designer can be in charge of:

Logo design and branding
Advertising brochures and flyers.

Catalogs

Business cards

Advertising banners.

As you can see, the universe of graphic design is complex … but very beneficial for your brand. If your company still does not have its own corporate identity, what are you waiting for?

Is LinkedIn really different from other social media platforms?

There are many social platforms, apart from the well-known ones. One of those less known ones is LinkedIn, Although it is one of the best, it is also one of the most misused!

In this article, we are going to analyze what differentiates LinkedIn from other social media platforms.

Technically all social networks tend to homogenize.

If you are a user of several social platforms, you will have seen that they all tend to offer the same technical possibilities.

If one offers to share links, all end up offering it; if one offers to share in audio or video format, the others do too.

So you end up wondering what is the point of using one or the other if technically they all end up wanting to be the same.

Well, that is precisely why it is interesting because technical homogenization highlights what distinguishes some social networks from others.

So, In what areas you should use LinkedIn? and what do you use other networks for?

Indeed, the difference between some networks and others is the theme.

What are the uses of LinkedIn?

Why do we use for WhatsApp ?

What do you use Facebook for?

You can ask that same question for the current majority of social networks, then you will understand how to use them in your best interest.

What exactly is a social network?

A social network is a meeting place (in this case, virtual) where people meet to talk about something.

There are social networks of many themes: sports, cinema, books …

Obviously, not all of them are equally technically developed, but surely they all seek to allow their users to write posts, share links, photographs, videos, audio, etc …

Now, there are social networks that do not have a specific theme but are generalist.

And precisely some of these networks are the largest of all (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter …).

In these social networks, you can find conversations about many different topics.

In addition, to their technical power, their strength is based on the large number of users they have, which number in the hundreds of millions.

Being so massive and widespread, there are many users who identify the concept of “social network” with Facebook, or with Instagram, or with Twitter … and it is not like that.

Facebook is a social network, but that does not imply that any social network is Facebook.

What about LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a professional social network.

This, which is said so quickly, is the most difficult thing to understand for many of the users of this network.They enter LinkedIn and see that they can do the same as on Facebook (share photos, videos, links to articles, write comments, etc.).

Even the corporate color is also blue, even if it has another shade of blue.

LinkedIn is general in nature but within the professional sphere. This means that it is not a social network of electricians, or of engineers, or of doctors … but of everything at once.

Technically speaking, you can share, for example, a photograph of yourself at a party, at a wedding or on your vacation, in the same way, that you do on Facebook, you can share links to articles that talk about subjects related to a certain profession. However, in the case of LinkedIn, you will see that the real result of those interactions does not give you results.

The ease of automating makes the lack of LinkedIn understanding more apparent.

There are tools on the Internet that allow you to publish the same thing on several social networks at the same time. For example, you are eating a great sandwich on a rock next to a river, you take a photo of the sandwich and decide to share it. you would not have to publish it on each social network, but there are apps that allow you to select which ones you want to share that on. By doing this, you are treating all social media in the same way.

However, the response you will get will be different! surely your Instagram followers will comment something like “how good the sandwich looks” or “Enjoy it!”, But on LinkedIn, you will not have that type of interaction.
At most, someone will tell you that such a post should not be published on linked in!
In conclusion, the only way to differentiate LinkedIn from the other social media platforms is to use it as intended!

A Quick Look at The History of Motion Graphics!

This is the question to ask

Since video marketing became a visual trend to present any businesses, products, and services.
With motion graphics, there are literally limitless ways to convey an idea, depending on the objectives of each brand: video tutorials to express manuals or processes clearly and differently; testimonials to generate credibility from real profiles that are in contact with the company; cinematography to surprise the viewer … And in those, the fashionable format arrived: MOTION GRAPHICS.

Have you decided to make a video and you don’t know if it’s the right format? How about we check it out together?

The true meaning of Motion Graphics

Do you ask yourself often? This technique has become a trend relatively recently and refers to the combination of 5 different disciplines, such as photography, sound, video and graphic design. In short, visual elements that are brought to life with animation. Together, they make Motion Graphics one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing.

Some people confuse them with explainer or explanatory videos. And although they are not the same, they go hand in hand. In fact, the explanatory video is short and uses the animated format or Motion Graphics for a simple reason: it expresses complex ideas in a simple way, capturing the attention of the audience.

10 advantages of using Motion Graphics in your company

Although a testimonial video humanizes and a live-action video demonstrates a reality, Motion Graphics allows:

1- Use motion to strengthen branding.

2-Quickly and easily grab the audience’s attention.

3-Explain complex things in an easy and entertaining way.

4-Convey your message clearly and attractively.

5-Increase the retention of the user’s message.

6-Perfectly combine graphic design, animation, and sound.

7-They are concise, attractive, and can be adapted to any digital format.

8-They connect with the audience and are limited only by imagination.

9- They create eye-catching audiovisual pieces in no time.

10- They are easy to modify with a controlled budget.

8 goals for Twitter that will change your life in 2022!

The year 2021 is nearing its end, and the year 2022 is approaching! Many people see that the beginning of each year; It is a new opportunity to start creating specific plans and goals. Here’s how to improve your Twitter strategy to maximize success on this great platform in 2022:

1- Renew your Twitter profile

Keep your profile and content updated by giving it a new look for the New Year. Review these essential items and tips for advice on updating. Consider adding a new profile picture, bio, and pinned tweet. Even if your profile details are still accurate, doing those steps that may appear is simple; It will help give a clean and fresh look for the coming year.

2- Create a Twitter timeline

Tweeting regularly and consistently will boost your visibility and increase your engagement. You can help make tweeting a habit by creating a schedule outlining when and how often you plan to post, edit, and which content topics you plan to target. This will also help you understand the best times to post and what content resonates most with your audience.

3- Focus on your online personality

When it comes to content, a single approach is rarely successful. Instead, we suggest that you increase the number of Tweets that focus on your target audience.

Don’t wait for 2022 to come! Get started now and take a look at your target audience and make sure that they are still your actual customers. Make sure every tweet focuses on these characters. Not only will your content be more relevant and valuable, but it will also make it easier for you to discover relevant and engaging topics to tweet about.

4- Try new ad types

It can be easy to get caught up in social media, and if you’ve been advertising on Twitter for a while, you’re probably still taking the same approach you started with. But Twitter is constantly evolving, and there are many different ways to spread your message. Make 2022 the year you try Carousel ads, Takeover ads, and video ads.

5- Get closer to your audience

Use Twitter to interact directly with your audience and learn more about them. Interactive features like polls and chats on Twitter are great for this. You can also write simple questions in your posts, which will help you greatly to customize and write your content in a way that maximizes engagement.

6- Measure your success

You can’t improve your Twitter marketing in 2022 without analyzing your data to understand what your audience likes and what isn’t doing well. Set aside a weekly period to explore your Twitter analytics. You will begin to notice trends that you can use to constantly iterate and improve your Twitter strategy. Armed with this data, you can then consider using different targeting methods to ensure the right message gets to the right people.

7- Shorten your response times

People come to Twitter to engage in a particular conversation, talk directly to the people behind their favorite brands, listen, and express their opinions. There is nothing more frustrating than being ignored or waiting too long for a response. Make the New Year’s task to quickly reply to as many tweets as possible. Your followers will be grateful and therefore they will engage with you more deeply.

8- Run digital events on twitter

COVID-19 has made many brands lose direct interaction with customers. So you have to answer this question; How can your Twitter marketing in 2022 replace these interactions? For example, you can run digital events like live video lessons, workshops, and Q&A that put the faces behind your brand. This will help develop a deeper emotional bond in your audience.

Is the future of Instagram bleak?

Is the future of instagram bleak?
Every social media platform is shifting towards video content including Instagram ! Instagram has long been known as a place for sharing square photos. While Instagram has added video content and other new features over the years, the primary focus of the app has always been photo content, until now. Back in July, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri took to IGTV to give us some insight into what Instagram is doing and what the future of the app looks like. He explained that, given the huge success of video content across all platforms, Instagram has been shifting its focus from photos to videos.

“We’re no longer a photo-sharing app,” says Mosseri. “Video is driving an immense amount of growth online for all the major platforms right now, and it’s one I think we need to lean into more.”

is the future of instagram bleak and how will it Affect Your Business?

For many Instagram users, this doesn’t come as a big surprise. Last year, Instagram introduced reels, a new TikTok-style feature for sharing short video content in 9:16 portrait mode, which has seen huge success.

But for many social media managers and small businesses, this announcement felt like a devastating blow. Countless people rely on Instagram for their business, and many of them are worried about having to change their main content style from photos to video to stay competitive. And we get it! Video content is more time-consuming, has a greater learning curve, and requires staying up to date on current content trends. It’s intimidating!

Smart Media’s Thoughts

Let us shed a light on a different perspective. We see this as a good thing and are very excited about the rise of video content and the opportunities it presents.

Before the introduction of Instagram’s reels, organic growth was becoming nearly impossible on Instagram. The algorithm was making it more difficult for posts to be seen by your followers. And basically, the only way to reach non-followers was to end up on the explore page or to create content that people would want to share on their stories—both of which are very difficult to do.

Reels, however, are highly favored in the Instagram algorithm, making them an effective way to get your content in front of more eyes. The reels page on Instagram has an algorithm similar to TikTok; Instagram shows you the content based on what they think you will like, and it is not limited to content from people you follow. This means that more people that are interested in your product or niche will see your content and potentially discover your business.

In our eyes, this is a huge improvement to the app and a fantastic opportunity for small businesses. Plus, we think it’s really fun!

How can you adapt?

The only constant is change!

Nothing stays the same forever. As small business owners, we have to adapt and grow as circumstances change. For a business trying to stay competitive on any social media platform, that means embracing video content by creating and posting reels.

Facebook: The Superhero of Social Media Platforms!

Facebook is one of the first social media platforms that were used as a marketing tool for different brands

By creating a page for the brand and filling in the about section and posting about the products and services it offers, and then the audience begins to like the page, follow it and interact with it, and thus the brand succeeded in reaching an audience at the time on Facebook

But with the remarkable development and improvement of the platform, and how it has become one of the most powerful and most important social media platforms today. Facebook users spend more than 3 hours as daily, meaning that your customers spend most of their time on social media on Facebook in particular, which increases the chances of ad campaigns appearing to a large number of audience.

In the following section; we will learn about the most important benefits that accrue to your brand and your online business when you follow Facebook marketing strategy and create advertising campaigns using it:

1- Reach your specific target audience

One of the most important features and benefits of creating advertising campaigns through Facebook is the opportunity to reach a large segment of the audience, including your exact target audience and customers, where you can identify customers according to their characteristics and personal patterns, such as age, gender, interests and geographical location.

2- Facebook ads are one of the cheapest!

Another advantage of Facebook marketing and advertising is that it is one of the cheapest types of online advertising, so you do not have to spend a large amount of money to reach a larger number of people, but with the development of technology and electronics, it has become possible to calculate ads per click, which reduces costs and advertising budget for your brand , and so on in all other types of Facebook ads.

3- Quick results

The online marketer can see immediate and quick results of the advertising campaign as soon as it is created and launched to the public, i.e. Facebook ads are the fastest way to achieve your business goals such as achieving more sales, increasing conversion rates and visits to your store and thus increasing profit through Facebook.

4 Spreading awareness about your brand

One of the most successful means of spreading awareness, especially at the beginning, is Facebook. Facebook platform will increase the opportunity to spread your brand and increase awareness of it with your customers and audience, which will benefit you with a lot of benefits, such as increasing the selling rates of your products and services.

5- Increase conversion rates and traffic on your online store from facebook

Facebook ads will help you achieve any of the commercial goals of your online brand, the most important of which is to increase the conversion rate and traffic of your store.

For example, you can create a Facebook ad campaign to increase conversion rates to your online store when you put the website link as a CTA and then send them to your online store or website, which increases traffic to your store from multiple sources.

6- Increase the number of posts and interaction on the facebook page

Facebook ads contribute to increasing interaction with your target customers and increasing engagement on their side, such as likes, comments, and shares on the ad post or even other daily posts that you publish through your brand’s Facebook account.

This is a very important benefit, as the more interaction with your customers, the stronger the relationship between them and your brand and the products and services you provide, and this leads to the success and achievement of the purpose of promoting it online.

7- Increase your customer email list

The importance of marketing and advertising via Facebook does not necessarily negate the importance of email marketing and its effective role in the success of your online business and achieving more goals and achievements for your online store, also through Facebook ads you can get many email addresses for your customers and then use them when activating the marketing strategy email to promote your store and your brand in general.

8- Providing analytics and insights about your business

By creating advertising campaigns and obtaining reports and analyzes of their performance and audience reaction to them, you can get the insights and analyzes you need in order to develop your strategies and business, and know the negatives and obstacles to be addressed, and this saves you a lot of time and effort.

You can get these analytics easily and instantly from your account via Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Insights as well, and you will be provided with two weeks reports of the latest posts and likes by the audience to follow the performance of the campaign periodically allowing you to adjust the ads according to the data you have seen to get Better results

Can social media marketing really help my business?

Planning is the compass for achieving goals

You determine the main reason for your use of media platforms, and with it, you will know the map of the way you will take to achieve the desired success in marketing through social media sites. Planning is a very valuable process that can greatly contribute to enhancing your image on social media. Also in setting your directions, formulating priorities, and building an effective plan you need to answer these questions:

What is the purpose of my presence on social platforms?

What is the target audience and what are their needs?

What kind of content do I plan to publish and how will it contribute to improving the lives of customers?

How do competitors meet customer needs on social networks?

Be clear about why you are using social media. There is more than just one way, but you need to define what you want to achieve by using certain social media platforms and then really focus on a plan to expand your presence on them in a matter that benefits your business .

Set specific, measurable goals and timeframes for your marketing activities, and

remember that poor planning is often worse than no planning at all. It is important to have a marketing plan that can be updated, so don’t make a plan once and just keep it, you need to have a living plan that is developed as your business grows and changes. Social media marketing is a work in progress that changes when necessary.

Smart Media

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