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Places I want to work (Surprise #1)

Places I want to work (Surprise #1)

Home Depot Careers

As I surf around looking at Careers sites, I try to put myself in the place of someone who really might want a job at that company. For example: If I wanted to work at (say) Home Depot, how would I react to their Careers presentation?

Let’s specify that Home Depot would not be a natural fit for me. Although I actually am very handy, and love tools–I’d be hard-pressed to work eight hours a day in a retail environment. (At least for more than a few weeks.) And for various reasons, I don’t think they would hire me! But I was surprisingly charmed by Home Depot’s Careers site, and found myself wishing that I could join “the team.”

What won me over?

  • A clean look that captures the company brand, but also adds a Careers personality.
  • Attention to detail—little things about the messaging that add up to a nice impression.
  • An inviting, inclusive emotional appeal that’s not too obvious.
  • A “bigger picture” view of opportunities with the company.
  • A feeling that the company respects job seekers.

Drilling down to specific sections of the page:
Home Depot Careers

First, I like the picture at top in the main area because the smiles seem sincere, not posed. Second, I like the picture because the diversity seems natural, not forced. And third—I like the effect of the whole composition, especially how the word “Passion” stands out and draws my attention.

Attention to design detail shows up with the reflection effects beneath the three smaller pictures. A simple touch, but it creates a depth and reality that wouldn’t be there if the images were set in flat. And care for messaging is evident in the headline question: “What Will You Build?” It uses the brand-appropriate metaphor of building in just the right way—to connect the Home Depot business model with my personal career.

The next bit of detail adds a little fun:
Home Depot Careers

Since video testimonials are found on so many sites now, the extra touch of a playful title (“Behind the Apron”) makes this feature stand out. And the photographs have active energy—especially the Merchandising high-five and that great attitude from the “Pro Sales Associate.”

Home Depot Careers
A big plus for me was the prominent list of Career options. As a Home Depot shopper, my image of the company was mainly about people stocking and selling in the warehouse-style stores. I hadn’t thought about EXPO Design Centers as part of Home Depot, or about opportunities in Installation, Call Centers, etc.

So this information expanded my perception of the company and made me think—wait, there might be a job fit for me somewhere in Home Depot after all.

Home Depot CareersFinally, I appreciated the easy access to tools and information provided on the left-side navigation bar. I get a quick impression that Home Depot has taken my needs into consideration, both as a site visitor and as a potential employee. They have provided a language choice and search functionality, and they are offering me information on customized employment programs, growth opportunities, and the Home Depot work environment.

Plus–the employee access gateway invites me to wonder what’s on the other side of that “Career Depot” button! And here we take a crucial step in engagement, because now I’m imagining myself as an employee.

All in all, Home Depot Careers doesn’t break any new ground—but it covers the basics very well and connects effectively with the visitor. So it’s made my very short list of sites that sell the company well!

YouTube Marketing Lessons from the Top 100 Global Brands

youtube video cameraDid you know that since YouTube was founded in 2005, the top 100 global brands have published 285,000 videos on 1,378 YouTube channels, and those videos have been viewed more than 9.5 billion times?

That’s just one of the statistics included in Pixability’s report, “The Top 100 Global Brands: Key Lessons for YouTube Success.” Pixability reports that since 2009, YouTube video publishing rates have climbed 73% annually on average, and today, only one brand in the list of the top 100 global brands does not have a YouTube channel. In fact, 56 of the brands on the list have 10 or more YouTube channels.

All of those videos and YouTube channels don’t guarantee YouTube marketing success for the top 100 global brands. Pixability’s researchers found that over half of the videos published by these brands have been viewed fewer than 1,000 times.

Four industries are far more active on YouTube than any other. These include media, B2C technology, B2B technology, and automotive. The top brands based on videos produced and total views are similar not just in the brands represented on both lists but also in the significant drop-off after the top three or four brands. Take a closer look at the top 10 brands based on number of videos produced and number of video views below.

Leading Brands on YouTube Based on Number of Videos Produced

  1. MTV = 23,756
  2. Thomson Reuters = 23,315
  3. Disney = 15,367
  4. Google = 12,467
  5. Samsung = 12,013
  6. Sony = 9,938
  7. Intel = 8,034
  8. Siemens = 7,293
  9. Nokia = 6,637
  10. Cisco = 6,612

Leading Brands on YouTube Based on Number of Video Views

  1. Disney = 2,502,016,234
  2. Google = 1,482,632,321
  3. Sony = 1,013,074,058
  4. Samsung = 522,386,484
  5. Nokia = 429,723,722
  6. Nike = 345,273,230
  7. MTV = 205,982,283
  8. Coca-Cola = 197,753,679
  9. Adidas = 185,520,895
  10. Nintendo = 174,495,568

The Pixability report offers seven YouTube marketing best practices gleaned from the team’s research, which any brand marketer can use. You can read the full report here. It’s filled with useful statistics and information that are well-worth your time. For example, the report authors write, “The top 25% of brands on YouTube had higher Facebook (330 times greater) and Twitter (89 times greater) video sharing than the bottom 25%, representing the highest disparities in this entire report.”

Following is a brief recap of some of the YouTube marketing tips provided in the report:

  • Continually use targeted YouTube advertising.
  • Publish a lot of videos consistently.
  • Optimize your videos and channels with YouTube-specific SEO tactics, relevant tags, and numerous playlists.
  • Publish more videos rather than adding more channels
  • Publish a variety of video content that includes both high quality and lower quality videos as well as short and long videos.

The good news for brand marketers is that video content on YouTube has longevity. Among the top 100 global brands on YouTube, Pixability found that within the first three weeks after a video is published on YouTube, it will receive 40% of its lifetime views. Between four and 12 weeks after a video is published, it will receive another 30% of its lifetime views, and between 21 and 52 weeks, it will get another 30% of its lifetime views. Unlike other social media sites and channels where content has an extremely short shelf-life and often disappears within hours, YouTube videos have staying power that brands can leverage as part of their integrated marketing plan for a very long time.

How are you using YouTube to market your brand? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Jacob Power

2013 Web Design Trends that Affect Brand Image

web design trends 2013Does your web design appropriately reflect your brand image? Is your web design leveraging the most current technologies and trends? Enfuzed put together an infographic (shown below) that details the hottest web design trends of 2013. Take a look and see if your web design is in need of an update.

Of course, there is more to web design for brand building than being trendy. With that in mind, simply chasing the web design trends depicted in the infographic below might not be the right strategy for your brand.

Brands are unique and the best brands understand their audience. In other words, trends shouldn’t be prioritized over usability, because a website that’s confusing to consumers spills over to brand confusion. Knowing that brand confusion is the number one brand killer, you need to create a web design that offers the best balance between design and function so users’ expectations for your brand experiences are always met.

Consumers build brands, not companies and not websites. A trendy website might win some awards, but it might not win enough customers. Which matters at the end of the day?

With all of that said, the infographic below highlights some fantastic web design trends that can have a positive impact on your brand building efforts. For example, responsive design is becoming more and more popular as a way to create amazing user experiences across devices at a fraction of the cost that stand-alone mobile apps provide. Even Google has publicly acknowledged its preference for indexing responsive websites over mobile sites.

Another trend, infinite scrolling, is getting mixed results from users and should be tested before fully implementing it on a brand website. With infinite scrolling, new content keeps displaying as a visitor scrolls down the page in an infinite manner. In other words, it’s impossible to get to the footer, and that’s a design trend that many internet users aren’t accustomed to yet. Therefore, it can create a negative user experience which will reflect negatively on your brand.

On the other hand, the fixed header trend, where the header with navigation always appears at the top of the browser window as the visitor scrolls down the page, is being met with a very positive response from internet users. A fixed header saves visitors time because they can navigate from one page of your brand website to another without having to scroll back to the top of the page. This feature enhances the user experience and subconsciously improves users’ perceptions of your brand.

You can see all of the web design trends for 2013 in the infographic below.

2013-Web-Design-Trends-Infographic

Online Video Advertising Will Steal Significant Budget from TV and Display

For the third year in a row, BrightRoll (a leading online video advertising services provider) conducted an online video advertising study among ad agency executives. The report reveals significant shifts in advertising spending in 2011 particularly for online video advertising, which is growing faster than all other online advertising categories. In fact, budget shifts to online video advertising are coming primarily at the expense of television and online display advertising budgets.

Six out of ten ad agency executives who responded to the BrightRoll survey indicated that they believe the targeting capabilities of online video advertising makes it more effective than or as effective as television ads. 86% reported they are shifting investments in online display advertising to online video advertising in 2011, and 64% said they would shift at least part of their television advertising budgets to online video advertising. Search, social media, and direct response advertising budgets aren’t safe from the allure of online video advertising either. Nearly 30% of ad agency executives who responded to the BrightRoll survey indicated they planned to shift budgets from search, social media, and direct response advertising to online video advertising.

Overall, ad agency executives who responded to the survey indicated that the most common increases in ad spending in 2011 will be in online video advertising (28%), mobile media (27%), and social media (25%).

There are several reasons why ad agency executives and their clients are focusing on the potential for online video advertising and making the necessary investments to leverage the medium. The BrightRoll study revealed that behavioral targeting capabilities of online video advertising are what makes the medium so vital to their marketing plans with 41% of respondents citing this as the most valuable attribute of the medium. Reach (23%), ad unit format (19%), price relative to television (10%), and the ability to reuse creative (10%) were viewed as less valuable but still important.

It’s the behavioral targeting capabilities of online video advertising that has the advertising world so excited. The BrightRoll study reports that advertising executives believe behavioral targeting is most important for online video advertising success (28%) followed by contextual (24%), demographic (21%), and content (10%) targeting.

When it comes to purchasing online video advertising space, buying directly from online publishers is the most common method of purchasing inventory (52%), followed by buying from ad networks (31%), broadcasters (10%), portals (6%), and ad exchanges (2%).

Online video advertising is still a fairly new medium but it’s growing very quickly. It’s safe to assume that the online video advertising market will look very different in a couple of years. The question is whether or not your brand will be an early adopter and learn to leverage its capabilities now or if you’ll be trying to catch up later.

What is your company doing in the online video advertising space? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng

Fortune 500 Companies Active in Social Media in 2013

new_yorkFortune 500 companies are actively using social media more in 2013 than ever before. According to research from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, every form of social media activity tracked among Fortune 500 companies since the research was first conducted in 2008 grew this year, including the use of corporate blogs, Facebook Pages, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Fortune 500 companies are also active on Google+, Instagram, and Foursquare.

According to the research report authors, Twitter is used by the highest number of Fortune 500 companies (77%) and was also the social media site that saw the most growth since 2012 (7% in a tie with YouTube). Detailed results follow, and you can read the full report on The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Market Research website. It’s important to point out that the data collected in this study focused on corporate social media profiles and activities, not brand-specific activities. You can read about the methodology behind the study by visiting the website link above to access the full report.

Blogs

More than one out of three (34%) of Fortune 500 companies are publishing corporate blogs (a 6% increase from 2012), and 79% of those blogs are current, have RSS feeds, and allow comments, making them truly social. Believe it or not, three of the top five Fortune 500 companies don’t have blogs, but overall, 47% of all Fortune 500 blogs are published by the top 200 corporations. These blogs come from 171 corporations in 58 of the 75 industries represented in the Fortune 500.

Twitter

More than three out of four (77%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate Twitter profiles with at least one tweet published within the past month (a 4% increase over 2012). Eight of the top 10 companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate Twitter accounts. Overall, 43% of all Fortune 500 corporate Twitter accounts are managed by the top 200 corporations. These Twitter accounts come from 387 companies in 72 of the 75 industries represented in the Fortune 500.

Facebook

Nearly three out of four (70%) of Fortune 500 companies have corporate Facebook Pages, which is a 4% increase over 2012. Overall, 41% of all Fortune 500 corporate Facebook Pages are published by the top 200 companies. The 348 companies that are active on corporate Facebook Pages come from 72 of the 75 industries represented in the Fortune 500.

YouTube

Nearly three out of four (69%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate YouTube accounts, which is a 7% increase from 2012.

Pinterest

Nearly one out of ten (9%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have Pinterest boards, which is a 5% increase from 2012.

Google+

More than one out of three (35%) Fortune 500 companies have corporate Google+ accounts that are active. This is the first year that the research for this study included Google+.

Instagram

Nearly one in ten (9%) of Fortune 500 companies have corporate Instagram accounts. This is the first year that the study research included Instagram.

Foursquare

Nearly one out of ten (9%) of companies in the Fortune 500 have corporate Foursquare accounts). 2013 is the first year that Foursquare was included in the study research.

Final Thoughts

As the study authors explain, “Rank clearly impacts social media adoption.” The study found companies that rank higher in the 2013 Fortune 500 list are more likely to adopt and actively use social media than companies that rank lower on the list. This holds true for all social media sites analyzed in the study.

It’s also interesting to note that 59% of Fortune 500 companies that are using social media provide links to their social media profiles from their corporate website home pages, which makes their social content easily accessible to customers, investors, vendors, journalists, and more. Surprisingly, 41% of Fortune 500 companies make it a lot harder to find their corporate social media profiles. You’ll need to do some searching to find them.

What do you think of this study’s findings? Does your company maintain active corporate social media profiles? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Simona Dumitru

Pinterest Becomes More Personalized and Ad-Ready

push pins pinterestOn Friday, Pinterest announced the release of two new features that leverage the massive amount of data it has at its disposal about its growing user audience. By analyzing both the content users pin and like on Pinterest as well as sites they visit outside of Pinterest that have the Pin It button, Pinterest will provide more personalized recommendations for additional content that users might like.

According to an article on the Pinterest blog, a new Edit Your Home Feed button is available which enables users to edit the content they see online or on their mobile devices to get their feed the way they want it. Ke Chen, Pinterest Software Engineer, explains, “Go to Follow Boards to see stuff you might like based on what you’ve been pinning. Or go to Unfollow Boards to stop seeing stuff you’re not that into anymore.” The more you pin, the better Pinterest’s board recommendations will get.

Pinterest also announced that it will provide more suggestions for pins and boards users might want to follow based on the websites they visit that have the Pin It button on them. For example, Pinterest might suggest boards about weddings to a Pinterest user who is planning a wedding and visits a lot of wedding sites that have the Pin It button.

Pinterest does offer a way to turn off the tracking features within users’ account settings, but they’re turned on by default.

What Does This Mean for Brands?

People have been speculating for some time that Pinterest is preparing to follow in other social sites’ footsteps by rolling out advertising in order to bring in some revenue. Cotton Delo of AdAge speculates that the roll out of personalization features using the data Pinterest collects is a major step to bringing Pinterest advertising to life. Cotton suggests three ways Pinterest might turn this data into advertising opportunities:

  1. Selling promoted pins to brands.
  2. Building audience segments to sell to marketers who want to advertise on Pinterest.
  3. Starting an ad network.

The opportunities are huge. Brands want to connect with consumers on Pinterest. It’s a highly visual medium used primarily by women who, research shows, make or influence the vast majority of purchase decisions. Pinterest also has a highly engaged audience, so it’s critical that advertising which is introduced doesn’t damage the user experience. As more and more Facebook users express frustration with the growth of promoted posts and ads that clutter the content they actually want to see, Pinterest should be taking notes and applying the lessons learned to its own future advertising efforts.

What do you think of the future of Pinterest advertising and the company’s use of behavioral tracking? Would your brand be an early adopter of Pinterest advertising if the opportunity presented itself? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

Image: Chris Cummings