Join Burkey Belser and Gayatri Bhalla for the final webinar of our three-part series:

Pioneering the Digital Relationship
Wednesday, March 3; 2:00–3:00 PM EST

During “Pioneering the Digital Relationship,” we’ll discuss how a digital strategy—using tactics such as search marketing and social networking—can amplify your brand message and reach the right prospects and clients at the right time.

You will learn:

• How SEO, SEM and social media will play a role in your firm’s future
• And more.

Register Now!
Reserve your webinar seat at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/645706218

Connect with others participating in this webinar:

• RSVP and post questions on Facebook
• Post questions and follow the webinar on Twitter.
• Use/follow the hashtag #GBLTD

Join us for our next Webinar:

Designing the Interactive Experience

Wednesday, February 24; 2:00–3:00 PM EST

Join Burkey Belser and Gayatri Bhalla on February 24th at 2 PM for the next Webinar in our series. All delivered in 60-minutes on your own desktop.

You will learn:

• How to create an effective, SEO-friendly Web site.
• And more.

Register Now! Reserve your Webinar seat at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/927177267

Nobody understands the importance of user perspective better than Google. While undertaking advances in social networking and information sharing, Google is always mining data to improve the user experience.

Enter Google Labs
Google Labs are the testing grounds where the search-engine giant stores its applications-to-be so that interested users can try them out. By placing highly-visible “Feedback” links on every page of their Beta applications, Google is able to collect valuable user perspective, which is used to make improvements to the final interface.

One of the latest products from the Google Lab is “Google Browser Size”—a visualization of various browser window sizes, which indicates what content can be seen without scrolling. Using this application will give you a good perspective on what is “above the fold.” Since the most important content—that is, the content that you absolutely want your users to take away from your site—should be presented above the fold, Google Browser Size is an invaluable tool for both designers and clients alike.

Take Note. Pass it Along.
What does this mean for the design of your site? It means that space is precious! If you want to hook the user, then making the best use of the information being displayed is mission critical.

Is your site designed for the most common user perspective? Check it out.

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

So I got this mini HD video camera over the holidays, and I’m obsessed. My mind is spinning with ideas for videos as I film clips that I edit later on my desktop. Short movies to post to YouTube and my iPod. Ahh, technology! In this particular video sketch, I decided I would record my walk to work from my apartment in Adams Morgan to my office at Greenfield/Belser near Dupont Circle.

Initially it was a simple experiment in how to actually use the camera. But I found my four-minute walk to work in the morning through a camera lens gave me an entirely new perspective on everything I routinely ignore. Making the familiar fresh is a part of what great design is all about. Not that this even pretends to be great video but what surprised me is that there is actually some suspense in this handheld, very shaky walk. Bottom line: Authentic video that’s personal can match up with high-production video and open inexpensive opportunities for your organization. It can add warmth and personality to an otherwise ordinary corporate day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF6SoGRcNr4

Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox Corporation

Avatar has been a runaway blockbuster hit of the holiday movie season. Of course it is a film with spectacular visual effects, amazing new technologies and an original story, but we marketers also find it notable for its smart use of social media.

Avatar isn’t the first film to promote itself on Twitter, Facebook or MySpace—far from it. Every movie these days has its own Web site with rich video, Twitter handle, MySpace presence and more. What Avatar did that was unique was use these platforms in ways BETTER than anyone else has and APPLY LEARNINGS from other films.

For example, nearly all films run trailers online—it helps to drive traffic to the site and introduce the content to a broader audience. Avatar, however, did this twice as well: Not only did it roll out three different trailers (including one interactive one), but when fans re-mixed one of its trailers and mashed it up with other movies, the movie house stood by and let the fans have at it. It trusted its fans with the brand and permitted passion to spread and grow.

While service firm sites will never see the kind of adulation and interaction as a movie or consumer brand site, lessons abound for professional services firm CMOs and their events, thought leadership efforts and other promotional efforts:

1. Use your digital presences in concert with one another. Each site/page/link should fit into the larger constellation of the Web presence you currently manage, and you should have a clear strategy for how they play off one another.
2. Even if you are not the first to market in using social media, the opportunity to use it better than anyone else still exists. Professional services firms lag sorely behind in social media use, never mind using it for differentiation. That’s an opportunity.
3. Web 2.0 by definition encourages interaction with your brand. Embrace it. Monitor it, but jump in. Allow—nay, encourage—your employees, clients and prospects to interact with you in the online space, be it through reviews (both good and bad), citations, links, etc. The conversation will happen anyway—you may as well be a part of it.