Conversations Slider Xara Web Designer

Xara Web Designer Home Page

For as little as $49.99, Xara Web Designer is one of the most enabling Web Design tools you will ever get the chance to experience. While competitors like Wordpress and Wix currently dominate the DIY professional's list of choices for web development softwares, Xara is becoming widely recognised for its ease of use, practicality and little need for coding.

In this article, we hope to elaborate the Pros and Cons of this amazing program to allow you to decide if Xara Web Designer is the right software for you. Should you wish to jump straight to the Xara Web Designer Website, please CLICK HERE , otherwise, enjoy!

The Pros of Xara Web Designer

Affordable & Really Easy to Use

First off, why would you use Xara Web Designer instead of other DIY Website Builders? 

It's no doubt that tools like Wordpress are in high demand because of their reliability, available support and effective performance, but being even a little computer illiterate will make that learning curve even that more steep when it comes to customising or creating a website from scratch. If you have little time to go through tutorials and have a very specific vision of your website, Wordpress may not be the ideal solution for you unless you hire a developer or purchase a template that matches your vision as closely as possible.

Xara works a little differently from other Website builders as it allows you to jump straight into designing a responsive website exactly how you want it with little to no education in web-design. It has both a drag and drop interface as well as creation tools that allow you to do almost anything you want (granted, understanding digital practices and having a flare for aesthetic design goes a long way). Whether you desire a website comprised of many forms, slideshows, pages and widgets meant to wow your audience; to a simple, informative website to steer prospective customers towards with signup forms; Xara is your ideal solution.

A template we made available in our Online Store, www.thedmc.wazala.com

Perfect for Business Owners, Startups and Medium Sized Businesses.

Our most common experience with our clients is that they seek to be enabled. One reality of running your own startup or rising business is that you are always trying to cut costs and keep everything under your own control. As a result, a majority of business owners are running day to day with a partially finished website that they couldn't afford to finish or was made with one of the many DIY Website Builders out there that were too hard to understand.

Xara Web Designer is nothing like that and allows you to have all your website needs under control until you decide that you would like a custom website built from scratch (these websites aren't made with DIY Web Builders but directly from apply code, often a very expensive and complicated activity). Even if you don't have a limited budget, choosing Xara will make it easy for you to pass your website responsibilities on to future staff members or even an entire department and is hence a good strategic choice when weighed up to the cost of employing web developers, educating staff etc. in the early phases of your business. 

Micro managing just got far easier!

Complete Customisation

Our clients are pretty set on how they want their websites to look like. Often times, we feel really lucky to be using Xara Web Designer as it allows us to create websites in almost any way that our clients want it with little time spent. Also, because of the simplicity of using Xara, our clients get the option to easily control and update their website by themselves without having to depend on an agency or developer to do it for them. 

When it comes to using tools like wordpress as a novice, it's unlikely that you will be able to completely customise an existing template exactly the way you want it as it will require you to brush up on your skills and handle some technical elements. With Xara Web Designer, you can create your website to look however you want without worrying about the hard stuff.

Made with Xara Web Designer, AV Technology

A Familiar Interface

Xara's interface is strikingly similar to tools like Paint, Photoshop, Illustrator & Indesign. With a layers panel to manage the pages of your website, a centre art board where your website pages are created and multiple Tools Panels which allow you to edit photos, create objects, text, show shadows, create 3D animations, place links and much more; Xara's overall interface is made to be familiar so that you don't have to get used to an entirely different system of working, saving you loads of time and frustration.

Xara Interface

Opening Up an Online Store is Easy

Running an Online store with Xara Web Designer is easy as Xara provides you with built in widgets to connect with online shopping carts like Wazala & Paypal (to learn more about how to use Xara, Paypal & Wazala together to sell products online, please click on this link: http://bit.ly/TheDMC_HowToSellOnline ).

Xara is a great tool for users who have a growing knowledge of the internet and are experienced in E-Commerce. Xara facilitates the use of custom widgets and other 3rd party service providers in making the reality of selling online that more achievable. 

We sell Xara Templates from our Online Store.

Easily Install Google Analytics

Xara is full of convenient ways that make your web-designing experience a breeze. Like installing Google Analytics, all you have to do is paste the tracking code that Google Analytics generates for you into one place and you're done! Xara will automatically apply that code to every page of your website.

A really important tool

Simple Publishing & Exporting

When you are done designing your website, you'll be able to publish it directly from Xara. Otherwise, you will also be able to export your website to upload to your host provider servers via their online platform. At The DMC SA, we prefer to export our websites first and then login to our Hosting Platform ( held with www.domains.co.za ) and directly upload it there.

www.domains.co.za , our preferred host provider

Large Choice of Existing Templates

Xara Web Designer comes with a whole selection of templates ready for you to customise. While most are fairly simple, it is always possible to move elements around effortlessly and turn any template into your perfect website.

Our own website, made with Xara Web Designer.
  www.thedmcsa.co.za

The Cons of Xara Web Designer

Limited Data Collection

Xara Web Designer is great, but it is limited at this point in terms of how you can control your website files and the coding that Xara Generates. This is a problem when it comes to retrieving large amounts of online data or when it comes to organising what elements of your website are priority etc. If you require a huge website with numerous, complex data retrieving activities, Xara Web Designer is not for you, not yet at least.

Collecting data is imperative to evolve your website

Image Quality & File Sizes

Xara doesn't handle large images well and requires you to become somewhat manual should you decide that a website full of vivid imagery is what you're looking for. Large file sizes will slow down your site's loading times considerably and can make gallery based websites a bit of a hassle. Xara does however offer an optimisation tool built in that is getting more powerful with every update. 

Currently, using tools like Photoshop and being intelligent about your design can give you the results you desire. Hopefully, Xara will be able to accommodate and display large volumes of high resolution imagery and other files types soon. But rest assured, every developers biggest problem has to do with decreasing file sizes, no matter what website builder you're using.

How are you getting your imagery optimised ?

Xara Widgets are Difficult to Customise

Perhaps you want a slideshow on your homepage, but you don't want the arrows that are displayed over the photo to show; tiny widget customisations like that are difficult without any coding knowledge as you will need to jump into the script for that widget to be able to change the tiny details. 

While you can still increase and decrease the size your widgets, you cannot influence the art boards within the widget to accommodate different image dimensions. It's not entirely a problem as there are work arounds with iframes and other tools, but don't expect high flexibility within the widgets that come with Xara. Xara does however sell more updated widgets from their website so that's a plus!

Many types of widgets can be integrated with Xara, like Jotform!

Retina Display Images and Publishing

If you have a 32 Bit computer, and you have activated the retina display option in the image pane found in web properties, chances are you will experience serious problems when it comes to publishing. Unchecking this field will solve your problems but it also means that 32 Bit computers won't be able to handle displaying images at that quality. You'll need a 64 Bit computer

Critical stages, no matter who you are, planning before
designing saves you a lot of hassle.

Not Available for Mac

Unfortunately, there is no Xara Web Desginer for Mac, unless you're running bootcamp or something else, don't expect to find a .dmg download (only .exe currently). If you only have a Mac and would really like to use Xara, you will need to install a simulator on your mac to run windows. Otherwise, it's time for a new laptop!

No Mac version of Xara available currently

And there you have it friends, we have plenty more to say but we will cap it at that for now. If Xara sounds like the right tool for you after having read our article, please CLICK HERE to be taken to the Xara Web Designer website.

Until next time, enjoy the Digiverse friends!

Conversations Slider The Venus Project

The Venus Project, one of many rising initiatives

Perhaps it might be reasonable to say that, considering the state of the world, a fresh look at society's future has been long overdue. The question is, how much change are you willing to go through?

Many initiatives, some existing for over 70 years, are devoted to providing a new framework to the political, economic and environmental pillars that could be considered adequate in dealing with matters of the 21st century. In the proceeding articles, we will be presenting to you various initiatives promoting a world where poverty is eradicated, technology is green, prisons abolished and science is the governing body.

The Venus Project

TVP, Circular Green Cities

To jump right into it, go to www.thevenusproject.com. Otherwise, read below:

Roxanne Meadows and Jacque Fresco

Led by Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows, The Venus Project (TVP) aims at establishing a Resource Based Economy whereby all the Earth's citizens have access to all of it's resources. In this kind of society, all religions and ethnicities exist simultaneously. Segregation by class does not exist and education is key in developing the youth to be the best that they can be without discrimination. People would not be required to work as all systems that have to do with farming, distribution, transport etc. are easily replaced with machines. All citizens of Earth have access to all information and pursue a career out of choice instead of necessity. 

And Finally, there would be no Monetary System. 

Reason being is that the Monetary System functions under the principle of Scarcity, declaring that there is not enough resources to supply everyones wants and needs. By placing a higher value on goods which are rare (or in high demand), The Monetary System is supposed to control peoples desires and provide them with an incentive (money) in exchange for labor, land or capital. 

While it theoretically should work, the system is used corruptly and is benefiting a minority of individuals and their agendas. While more official investigation is required to produce a clear and accredited picture, TVP believe that the current state of the world serves as proof of this claim. With nations speeding billions on stealth planes and other military activity, it's clear that decisions are being made that do not involve headlines such as "Billions spent on New Food Distribution Channels, Natural Disaster Responses" etc.

Most of today's issues have deep rooted problems which are not addressed adequately, some of these being the staggering levels of violence that exist in our current societies and the poor management of distributing and replenishing the Earths resources. TVP argue that these negative behaviours develop  as a result of our societal values and has a significantly larger impact on populations where their basic needs are not being met physically as well as psychologically. As long as people's primary needs are not being met, this problem will continue to persist. TVP have developed a very detailed framework which is open for debate and receiving growing attention from the world (including credible organisations) which addresses these issues.

TVP have provided ample resources on their site. For a quick download, we've included one of their PDF's in this post.  To read the Venus Project - Future by Design, click here.

Also, check out their Future By Design Documentary by clicking here.

Conversations Paypal Shopping Cart Wazala Xara Web Designer

So let's say you are a Xara Web Designer. You now want to create an online store that is compatible with your Xara Website. Fortunately, Xara have accommodated for this by offering a Wazala Widget that allows you to sell products online.

Many alternatives to online shopping carts can be used such as Shopify, Etsy or BigCartel. For this post, we will mainly discuss:

1. Setting up your Wazala store
2. Setting up a Paypal Account
3. Uploading your Products
4. Start Selling

So let's get started.

1. Setting up your Wazala store

Wazala Dashboard

1. Go to www.wazala.com. 
2. Sign up for a trial account, otherwise go ahead and pick a paid account with Wazala.
3. Customize your store by using the customisation tools provided in your dashboard.

Wazala Customisation

2. Setting up a Paypal Account

1. Go to www.paypal.com
2. Sign up to Paypal by clicking on the sign up button in the top right of the screen (Business or personal)
3. Provide the details that Paypal require including card details and addresses.
4. After you have signed up and successfully registered a card, authorisation will be next. In your Paypal account, navigate to Profile > Edit Cards. 
5. Click on Authorise Card/Link Card in the section that represents your previously registered card details.
6. Paypal will then charge your card with $1.95. After 1 to 2 days, this will reflect in your bank.
7. The reflected amount in your transaction history will contain a serial number.
8. Copy the serial number to use later.
9. Navigate back to Paypal > Edit Cards and click on "Enter Paypal Code".

Authorisation Panel

Enter the serial number and voila, your Paypal & Bank Account are linked.

3. Uploading your Products

Wazala supports multiple product types. Simply navigate to Wazala's Product panel by clicking on the cube as shown in this picture:

Product uploads & more

After uploading your products and you are confident with your online cart, click publish and your online cart will be ready to perform. To insert your Wazala products into your Xara Design, simply navigate to the Page Elements tab and find the eCommerce folder. Choose the Wazala widget and insert it into the area of your Xara website where you want to display your product. Follow the customisation prompts and there you have it, a Xara Website with shopping cart capabilities.

Some tips for your uploads:

1. If you're selling website templates, code, songs with artwork or any other product that may require extra documentation for the buyer to read, simply zip your product along with any other files you wish to include with the product for download. After you have zipped your file, upload it using Wazala's Product Upload Tool.
2. Provide online demos to websites and other digital purchases such as song previews etc.
3. Try and keep your product file size as small as possible without comprising on the quality of the product that you are selling. This is to forego long downloading times which may result in unsatisfied customers.
4. Make sure to provide an attractive picture in the product preview pane. Studies show that an attractive preview is more likely to get more attention and increase the possibility of a transaction occuring.

4. Start Selling

Before you can finally start selling, you'll need to link your Wazala store with your Paypal account. Follow these steps:

1. After successfully authorising your card on Paypal, log into your Wazala store and click on the Manager Icon > Payment > Paypal.
2. There are multiple Paypal option to choose from. Input the email address into the chosen Paypal Category and click save.
3. Make sure that Paypal supports the chosen currency else your customers will not be able to select a payment type during checkout which means no sale.
4. Take your site of Demo Mode by clicking on the Manager Icon > Settings > General Store Option > Un-tick Demo Mode and click save.
5. You are now live! 

Now it's time for your marketing efforts to drive traffic to your website. With tools like Adwords and other targeted marketing facilities, earning an income from your online store is more than just an attainable goal. Stay tuned for future posts regarding Digital Marketing and using it to your advantage.

Thanks for your time folks! Hope this helps :)

Analytics Conversations Slider Xara Web Designer

Google Analytics, a great tool to judge your Website's Performance and its Evolution

So it's been a little while since our last post but we're back in the swing of business and decided it's time to start sharing the knowledge and save you of your most important priorities, time & money.

In our last post, we gave you an overview of the tools and process that you should use when making your own digital identity. From here on out, we're keeping it in short bursts so that you can get the point of these tutorials quickly and without clutter.

If you haven't checked out our previous post "Make Your Own Website - Part 1", you can do so by clicking here . If you have managed to create and host a website, then let's begin with the next part.

How to Install Google Analytics

1. Make sure you have a google account. If you don't, create one by clicking here. 
2. After registering Google account, navigate to the Google Analytics website (or click here to go there now). You'll be able to access it with your Google account details.
3. After accessing the Google Analytics website, proceed with obtaining your analytics code. Google Analytics will ask you a couple of question before it can generate your code such as what is the url of your website etc. After successfully completing this criteria, you will be provided with an Analytics Code.
4. Copy paste this code either into every page of your website or a central source which will automatically apply Google Analytics to all facets of your website. If you are using Xara Web Designer, open up the Web Properties panel, click on the Analytics tab and paste your code into the provided area.
5. Save your website and allow Google Analytics anything from 10 minutes to a couple of hours to start showing you industry metrics such as Bounce Rates, Unique Visitors etc.

Thats it for this post! Next post, how to use Google Analytics to better your website as well as general decision making about your your business.

Conversations Slider

It's been an interesting ride here at The DMC.

One thing we've learnt is that in the world of websites, killing two birds with one stone is basically the same as trying to kill a stone with two birds. Putting strange analogies aside, it is well known amongst enthusiasts and professionals that the process of creating a successful website is met with a series of activities which are codependent on each other.

It's safe to say that in the past, this may have been a problem for the average shop owner, startup or independent consultant. With the world wide web mainly controlled by tech gurus or college graduates in the field of IT, making a website for your own company would involve sourcing highly educated individuals/organisations (not to mention the high costs associated with these activities).

Fortunately, these same people have started to put the power in the hands of the consumer. Today, it is possible to create your own website in as much detail as you need it with little to know coding knowledge. Purists will argue (and rightly so) that these 'solutions' are wrought with inefficiencies and use a coding language that is not supported by all browsers. Apart from the technical side, Purists may also argue that the ordinary person does not understand how the online user browses the world wide web and how to implement the necessary tools in understanding the ever changing habits of the online consumer.

And the verdict is that Purists are right. Employing a reputable organisation or trained individual will certainly result in a stunning online presence constructed with all the best practices in mind. If you have R15'000 to R40'000 to facilitate the cost, then go right ahead. It will save you time and frustration ( assuming that you are continuously communicating with your developers and providing them with the necessary resources). For those who don't have the budget, it's time to whip out the Maverick in you.

1. Make a plan and test it

To determine what tool will work for you, you will need to decide what types of information you would like your website to display. You may consider asking yourself the following questions:

1. Will I be selling directly from my website or collecting leads of prospects to sell to in the future?
2. What does my target market expect when navigating through a website? 
3. What does the competition's website look and feel like?
4. What differentiates me from my competitors and how can I communicate that on my website?

After you have determined the purpose(as well as look and feel) of your website, make a couple of mockups on paper and show them to your friends and family. Although they may not be your target market, their reactions will be invaluable to the development of your website. Use their reactions and critiques to patch up all the holes in your plan. Trust us, doing this part before you get to the actual design work down will save you loads of time and frustration.

2. Find some tools to work with

The key to developing a website without all that coding knowledge is to find the right tools that allow you to do the same job (well, almost). Thanks to all that planning and testing you did in the previous step, you will understand what kind of functionality your users might expect from your website. Achieving anything less may result in disappointment among your viewers, while exceeding their expectations can result in loyal customers.

Now, certain tools are out there that will help you get the job done, all have their pros and cons. Here is a list of our favourite website development tools that are growing in popularity and evolving in functionality:

1. Xara Web Designer ( 30 Day free Trial, downloadable software for $99, our favourite)
2. Wordpress (Online web design platform of free and paid templates)
3. Wix (Online web design platform of free and paid templates)
4. BigCartel (Online Shop)
5. Shopify (Online Shop)

Starting with one of the above platforms will be a good push in the right direction.

3. Choose a host-provider

Your host provider is the gate keeper to your website. Website loading times, emails and other factors are affected by the quality of your host providers infrastructure and service. When you register with a host provider, you will be given a list of passwords, ftp details, usernames and a more related to your account. These details will allow you to upload your website files to your host-providers servers. Every time someone wishes to visit your website, they will be downloading files from these servers. 

Most host-providers offer roughly the same deal so choosing one based on reliability is your main concern. There's nothing worse than trying to access your website but not being able to due to technical issues. If your business is largely fuelled by online sales, you'll truly understand what 1 or 2 days offline will do to you.

Most providers are reasonably affordable and won't cost you more than R250 a month to host your website. However, if you're choosing online web development tools like Wix or Wordpress, you won't need to worry about this part as all your files will already be held on their servers and updated in real time. If your budget is virtually nonexistent, running with Wix or Wordpress on their free accounts will allow you as much functionality as a paid account. Free accounts will look something like www.thedmc.wordpress.com while more designer domain names like www.thedmc.com/.co.za etc. will come at a monthly fee.

3. Domain names - .coms or a free domain?

Much dispute exists over the use of domain names. These domain names are also referred to as URLs and you will be paying a different prices for the suffix of your domain name (www.example.com/.net/.co.za etc.). So should you choose a .com website, a local suffix like .co.za or start with a free domain?

Search engines (like Google) will first look at the most reputable and relevant sites on the web before checking anything else out to place in a users search results. Having your own personal .com or .co.za   will play a part in determining the credibility of your website to Google Webcrawlers and to online users.

Which brings us to our next point. Credibility and professionalism is the main reason that .coms are in great demand. The question is, does having a personal domain name mean that you're going to turn up in Search Engine results? No. 

Search engines might rank a website (which is being hosted under a free account like www.example.wordpress.com) as more relevant than a website with a personal domain name. This is because the realm of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves a far greater spectrum of activities than merely choosing what suffix to go with. These are some of the reasons why a free account can still surpass the ever popular and personal .com :

1. The competing website includes the most common search phrases for their industry in the text of their website. To Search Engines like Google, keywords play a major role in determining the relevancy of your site compared to others. The more common keywords you use in the text of your website, the higher the relevancy.
2. Each page of the competing website is tagged and given a back end description.
3. The competing website has been submitted to Google for indexing.
4. The name in your domain name (www.NAME.wordpress.com or www.NAME.com) matches the most common search terms entered by users for your industry e.g. Users searching for caterers are likely to encounter websites which include the word catering/caterers in their domain name.
5. A competing website is using tools like Google Adwords to be placed at the top of the page in search term results.
6. A competing website may be using tools like Google Analytics to determine online user's behaviours on their website. They are then using this information to tweak their existing website to cater for their user's natural progression through their website, making it more relevant and credible.
7. A competitors website has more external links to and from their website than yours does. This includes 3rd party organisations like tour operators, directories and so on.

Many other factors also play a part in the optimisation of your website, searching SEO on Google will provide you with as much info as you need to understand SEO and successfully apply it to your website. 

4. Layout, colour schemes and navigation

Arguably the hardest part in creating a website for yourself, the look and feel of your website should be based on the preferences of your visitors. Most of the steps described above have a step by step approach. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for design. There is no set method to determining the design of your website. Rather, there are various rules that designers adhere to when thinking about the colour, font and imagery of their websites.

These are a few points you should consider when you finally start designing your website:

1. What parts of the computer screen do users look at the most? Some literature has discussed that the way in which cultures read and write will apply to how users view your website. In western languages, we read left to right and usually start a sentence at the top left corner of the page. Websites targeting western consumers may embed certain buttons (buy now, register now, find out more etc.) in these hotspots for greater exposure. Research eye movement and websites to better understand this principal.
2. Colour Schemes have an immense psychological impact that extends to both conscious and unconscious realms of the human psyche. Colour schemes have a lot to do with how humans have evolved to perceive colour in their environment. Earthy colours like brown, green and black might be more congruent for a gardening company than a pharmaceutical company.
3. The file sizes of each individual element of your website will affect the speed at which your website loads. Having a stunning website with all the latest graphics is great, but if your online user does not have a strong internet connection, they may never be able to see your website as it will take too long to load. Optimise your images by resizing them, converting them to bitmap or png instead of jpeg and try keep the number of large files to a minimum. In the world of web design, too much is way too much.
4. Navigating your website should be a breeze in the park. Keep your navigation bar as simple as possible and predetermine what sections of your website fall under what category (e.g. Home, About Us, Buy Now, Contact Us etc.)

5. Selling products or collecting leads?

Selling a product directly from your website will require different functionality as compared to an informative website meant to collect leads. Selling directly from your website will require a shopping cart and be able to facilitate payments. If this is the route you wish to take, consider Shopify or BigCartel as a start for your website. 

If you're collecting leads, consider Xara Web Designer, Wordpress or Wix. You'll be able to include forms to collect user names and email address to market to later through the use of online forms. Don't stress if you don't know how to code a form. You can create custom forms through the use of the following Online Form Tools:

1. Jotform
2. Form Stack
3. Woofoo

6. Royalty free images

Imagery in your website is crucial. Unless you have some of your own photography that you can use, you will likely need to purchase stock images or download royalty free images. Here are a couple that  we love to use when our photographers are super busy:

1. iStockPhoto
   
2. Shutterstock
3. ImageSource
4. Dollar Photo Club (Our favourite)

Make sure to select photos that communicate the values and emotions of your brand which are also pleasing to the eye. While HD imagery won't necessarily bring you more business, poor imagery displays a lack of planning and vision and often deters visitors from digging deeper into your website.

7. Reading your website should feel like poetry

Well maybe not poetry, but it should give the reader a clear picture of the message that is being communicated. You may not think it but people still rely on text before making a decision. Writing pleasant text is as difficult as deciding on the right colour schemes and format of your website as it is largely influenced by the writing style, preferences and experiences of the writer. Adhering to a few of these guidelines will help you avoid unnecessary mistakes and give you room to develop your text:

1. Spelling mistakes are extremely distasteful. Copy paste your text into a word document and 
   
   check your spelling.
2. Proof reading goes a long way. Even if you don't have any spelling mistakes, grammar is highly important as it sets the tone for your message. Getting a friend or family member to go over text will also single out mistakes that you overlooked.
3. Get to the point. Long articles are great for those who are searching for answers from literature. However, it is a totally different ball park when you are trying to sell something. Keep it short and sweet. It sounds easy but as the renowned saying goes 'If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter'.
4. Avoid white text on black backgrounds. While it does look cool and works on small portions of text, forcing you readers to endure a text heavy segment of your website with a black background and white text becomes a chore rather than a pleasure.
5. Use different words in the same sentence for essentially the same message. One of the major downfalls in writing is the repetitive use of the same word. Give this a read,' I jumped over the ledge and then jumped into the car. We had to jump-start it to make it work.' Now try this one, " I leaped over the ledge and flung myself into the car. We had to jump-start it to make it work'. Get the picture ?

Part 1 is now complete! 

We'll be issuing Part 2 in the coming weeks and will be talking about debugging, linking Google Adwords and Analytics to your website and how you can make these tools work effectively to meet your goals. Until then, utilising the above pieces of information will definitely put you on your way to creating your own custom website at a minimal to no cost. 

Conversations Slider

How is my Social Media going to help me if I start using it?

To understand this, let's first talk about the consumer.

Many people would love to have their own website, but most of them don't know how to make a website and aren't willing to go through the process of making one online due to time constraints or other responsibilities. Instead, it is far easier for them to upload photos, share stories, play games and participate in other online activities on an infrastructure that has already been made and facilitates the above mentioned online activities (e.g. Facebook). 

Today, most people with access to a computer and internet services are participating in Social Platforms to keep in touch with friends, express personal values and find inspiration for what they want to become and attain. In fact, Social Media activity is the highest ranked activity over all others. This is great news for Digital Marketing because it means that the consumer is telling you exactly what kind of products and services they want via their expression of personal values, preferences and and online behaviour in places like Facebook. 

To give you an example, an online consumer who actively shows an interest in Cakes and Baking on their Social Media is more likely to respond to a Company Facebook Page that offers affordable deals on some stunning cakes (maybe even lessons) as compared to a user who actively displays an interest in mechanics. Though if that mechanic is having a birthday soon, this may be an opportunity for the same Company Facebook Page to establish a connection and turn what seemed as an unlikely customer into a frequent buyer and brand of your quality products and services.

So I should be posting to my Social Media as much as I can?

You're almost right.

While high activity on Social Media is surely beneficial for your brand's presence and ultimately sales, many brands make the mistake of posting large volumes of content of medium to low grade quality. This includes, spelling mistakes, low resolution or irrelevant pictures, poorly communicated offers and the list goes on. Instead, more impact can be made with fewer posts which are of high quality. However, high quality pictures and videos won't help if you have a product or service that is unsatisfactory.

As the saying goes, if you've got a great product and an exceptional service, that's 50% of your marketing efforts done already. People will spread the news for you! All you have to do now is connect with people and offer them compelling content to interact with. Make sure you've got your offers (and execution of these offers) polished to the T.

How can I make compelling content for my brand's Social Media?

You don't always need expensive gear, work with what you got first.

You're a startup brand? That's great, trying to look and act like anything else would be incongruent to what your brand is at this point in time. Don't worry about the expensive DSLRs and lighting equipment, using tools like Instagram and natural lighting will go a long way in showing off your product without making you look unprofessional. The trick is in aligning your composition according to "The Rule of Thirds" (Click here to find out more about The Rule of Thirds technique) and making sure you have enough light to keep your picture from going grainy. So if you don't have a great budget, use tools like Instagram to take care of your images before sharing them to your online platforms.

Providing video content is now the trending source type of information that consumers are looking for. In fact, the second biggest search engine in the world is Youtube. Putting together mini videos that display a clean environment, are satisfactory in video quality and clearly communicate your offers will save you a lot of money and provide consumers with more transparency into what your brand is and what it does. These days, setting your smart phone up on a sturdy surface with strong light will allow you to make videos with good definition and clear sound. You have a world of power in your smart phone, now all you need to do is be a little creative.

I don't have time or the manpower to create my own content.

That's where teams like us come in.

As more and more online tools and social platforms emerge, the more the necessity exists for brands to allocate Social Media based roles and activities as an integral part of their product and service offering. Creating the content to use in your Social Media Strategy yourself will be time consuming and offer plenty frustration if you're scarce on time. Many establishments exist in various forms that can help you achieve and manage that content.

The DMC on Social Media

At The DMC, we offer all of our clients and prospective clients the opportunity to have all their content made for them, all in one place. Instead of having to visit photographers and ad agencies, our teams come to your establishment on a scheduled basis and create that content by taking, editing and publishing pictures and videos about your brand, product or service. We also take care of all communication that happens on our clients Social Pages on their behalf.

If you would like to find out more about our Social Media Offers, click here to be taken to the Social Media side of our website. We offer entry level, intermediate and aggressive contracts with creative sessions to help you get and keep that content flowing as easily as possible. 

Thank you for your time and we do hope we brought some clarity in how Social Media can work for you. Want to subscribe to our posts and newsletters? Please click here , otherwise, click here to be taken to The DMC's website.