Instagram, the uber-popular iPhone mobile app that lets users edit, stylize and share their photos, added an impressive 2 million users last month, coming close to the 15 million mark. The mobile app company attributes the boom to the launch of iPhone 4 and the holidays – more party photos to share! But their growth rate is strongly outpacing the other leading mobile-based app, Foursquare. And what’s really impressive about that is that Foursquare is on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Palm.

Sure, Instagram had its eyes set on mega-growth before its 2.0 launch earlier this year. And as we mentioned in an earlier blog, usability was its number-one improvement. Users can choose from four new filters with the 2.0 launch. And now, if you change your mind after you’ve taken a photo, you can apply a different filter fast – up to 200 times faster than in 1.0. But ease of use explains coming BACK. Why do people use Instagram in the first place?

Why? TTIUWP.

“This thread is useless without pics.” Now more than ever, with mobile devices and tablets, we are visual internet users. Everyone who’s friends with you on Facebook or following you on Twitter wants to SEE your San Diego SantaCon pics. Instagram offers this still-by-still and encourages users to comment on each other’s pics. They make it easy. And having a funny username, commenting on other users’ photos (especially with emoticons) and engaging people who comment on your photos really helps create a community of followers.

The Real Story

But Instagram does more than document activity. It lets the user tell a story. Using Instagram means participating in two key components of interactivity – creativity and inspiration. Instagram’s filters help you tell your unique story by adding emotion – a sepia filter for nostalgia, a color-pop filter for irony – and help you connect with your audience in, well, the blink of an eye. A single snapshot of a San Diego sailboat can be romantic or retro, depending on the filter. And not only can you add filters and effects, you can also easily add depth of field (something that can be tough to pull off even with more complex software like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop).

And the best part is, you get to play around until you decide. This is really the key to Instagram’s success. They let us play, get inspired and get creative. All from our phones and all for free. It’s no wonder Apple named them 2011 App of the Year!

Instagram photos above taken by President + Creative Director of Skybox Creative, Angelina Sereno. Follow her by name or @happygumdrops!

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Branding Agency with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

by Angelina Sereno

Once you’ve got a Facebook page as part of your social media marketing plan, it’s time to think about what to do with it. We know, from our own personal use of Twitter and Facebook that it’s all about staying active. We want to be in that news feed! And if you’re a business looking to engage customers, it’s even more important. After all, action – whether it’s foot traffic for your San Diego beachfront taqueria or “likes” on your small-business blog – means business. And nowhere is that more true than in the world of social media marketing.

But aside from posting company or product updates, commenting on industry news and answering customer questions, how do you keep your Facebook community alive?

The Social Media Examiner has recently published a list of the ten best Facebook apps for building community.

Facebook apps don’t just mean Farmville anymore. There are now tons of apps on the social media giant that help highlight top fans and helps you engage with your fans by sharing videos, photos, slides and get feedback from users. And what’s great is that, since they’re designed to be used and disseminated in the social networking world, they’re pretty easy to use.

Praise Your Customers

Everyone likes a little positive feedback – especially in social media. I mean, why else do we post our best San Diego sunset pics? We want the “likes”! A couple of the apps noted by the Social Media Examiner – “Fan of the Week” and “Booshaka” — track your fans’ activity on your page and get points or even a personalized shout out for being active.

Interaction Action

Many of the Apps in the top ten have to do with company-customer interaction. Livestream lets you post live video events to your page and even has a chat feature for interaction. ContactMe lets you customize fields for fans who want to get in touch and Constant Contact lets fans sign up for newsletters right from your Facebook page. Scribd, the company that offers document-sharing services in the real world, also offers a service for the virtual one, Scribd for Pages.

Other apps can help you manage updating content and scheduling posting. For the rest of the top ten, check out the article. Or, for a deeper list, check out Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page.

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Branding Agency with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

by Angelina Sereno

With nearly 80% of online Americans using blogs, Twitter and social networking sites, social media provides a unique opportunity for businesses to reach and embrace their customers beyond traditional media, allowing businesses to define and communicate with a specific niche market. Business owners should no longer be asking if they should use social media, but figuring out how. We’ve put together a list 5 major factors to consider while creating and maintaining social media in your marketing and communications plan:

1. Know Your Customer:
Social media has nothing to do with you and everything to do with your audience. We have given way to a digital society and with all demographics using social media in almost equal portions, there is no typical social media user. That being said, all social media users do not frequent the same sites making it imperative to get to know your customer and find out which platforms are best for reaching them. Go where the attention is; visit forums that apply to your business and get involved posting and answering questions. This will not only create a following, but give you insight into specifics about your target market. Once you’ve defined your niche, keep thinking about your target, listen to your customers, and refine your content accordingly.

2. Start Small:
Social media is a never ending commitment that requires time, energy and effort. Instead of attempting to tackle every platform at once, realistically choose one or two that are the best for reaching your market. Establish specific business goals and objectives and define who will be responsible for keeping activity going. Do a little bit often, constant activity even in small quantities is much more effective than showing up inconsistently.

3. Be Personable:
Social media doesn’t equal self-promotion. Posting and tweeting exclusively about the company isn’t going to produce results. Let your customers in to show your humanity. Offer advice, information and be the conduit between your audience and valuable content and resources. Before you link to content, make sure it is relevant and adds value to your audience. Be social, comment and help others by asking questions, stimulating conversation and responding thoughtfully.

4. Measuring Success:
Relationships, trust and credibility are not built overnight, so be patient. Focus on who is engaging and grow your community from there. Rather than trying to acquire a whole new customer base, use social media to build relationships with existing customers. A loyal, devoted start will lead to organic growth and a stable future. SPAMMING= No Traffic, you wouldn’t sell out your friends, so don’t sell out your customers.

5. Get Help:
It’s impossible to be an expert at everything, so don’t hesitate to hire a social media expert to help in maintaining your social media presence. Remain involved by communicating what voice you want portraying your brand and by delegating what content and information is discussed. Don’t be afraid to respond and comment even if you are not responsible for the main content.

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxseo.com or call us at 619.381.3825

No mobile application has made iPhone users feel more talented – or attractive — than Instagram. Vacation pics on San Diego beaches or brunch photos of awesome pancakes become instant masterpieces on Facebook and Twitter. And now, with its eyes set on growing from 10 million users to 100 million, Instagram’s launching version 2.0.

With the boom in photography-based mobile application development, Instagram made its number-one improvement is usability. Increased speed and instant effects – filters, tilt-shift effects, rotating the photo — make this version of the popular app all about instant gratification. You can apply every photo effect before even snapping the shot. And if you change your mind after you’ve taken a photo, you can apply a different filter in a flash – up to 200 times faster than in the original version of the mobile app.

There are also four new filters: Amaro, Rise, Hudson and Valencia that riff on the popular theme of old-style film with color that pops. Seventies San Diego or fifties pancakes, anyone? For more on the specific changes and tech specs, check out the reviews on Mashable and TechCrunch.

Classic all Over Again

Diane Arbus’ famous “Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park” with Instagram App filter

Instagram is one of the most popular mobile apps for making regular photos look like classics, but what about applying it to already-recognized masterpieces? One site, Mastergram takes the mobile application where it may never have been developed to go – classic photos. Photographers like Cindy Sherman, Robert Capa and Diane Arbus get the filter treatment for good . . . and for bad.

Instagram has developed a tough reputation to live up to, but the latest version of the mobile app may do just that. With the market quickly flooding — and mobile application development happening at breakneck speed — that’s a feat in itself.

One final note… in case you’re wondering, there’s still no word on developing the Instagram application for Android.

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

Using social media for marketing sounds like a great option for small businesses – you can brand yourself to a niche market and extend your marketing reach beyond traditional avenues. But just how is a small business supposed to wrangle Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now even Google+? Managing posts and tweets and friending the right people can all be a bit overwhelming.

Fortunately, there are plenty of companies already using social media marketing that can serve as great models. Social Media Examiner recently handed out their 2011 Small Business Facebook Pages Awards to companies who are already maximizing their social media reach on Facebook. And if you look at the winners, there are some common characteristics.

Most of the pages feature great visuals – photos, logos and video – and offer a wide variety of content including blogs, customer testimonials, and Q & A’s. And without exception, the pages feature clear branding with appealing design and use of logo.

But what’s interesting is that the pages were often standouts for very small-business-y reasons. That is, people like the same things about mom-n-pop shops online that they do in the real world.

Yeah, it’s Personal

All the winners of the Small Business Facebook Pages Awards kept their pages personal. Some, like SnapRetail, feature photos of staff to put faces to their company name. Companies Piggies & Paws, Easy Lunch Boxes, and Garden Quest were praised for their consistent, individualized responses to wall posts. And Dog Training Ireland and and Brasserie Sixty6 use Facebook to accept reservations – personalized customer service right online.

Market with Me, Not at Me

One of the ways award-winning pages kept it personal was by offering interactivity. Top-ranked Intrepid Travel features an interactive game and an online community. Others, for example, New Jersey Family use their Questions tabs to ask fun questions – think of it as a trivia night at your local pub.

And a Little Quid Pro Quo Never Hurts

Several of the award-winning Facebook pages offer incentives for “Liking” the page. Some of these are simply “Facebook Specials”, like at Obeo, but Arizona Pro DJs actually gives out prizes. If you’re in a business with easy giveaway “perks” or are able to offer free consultations, this can be a great way to get your brand out there. Maybe that San Diego surf shop can hand out a free surf lesson?

So these are some of the lessons learned from this year’s top small business Facebook pages. Of course, Leo Burnett’s marketing adage holds as true for social media marketing as it does for traditional marketing, “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.”

Skybox Creative is a San Diego based Brand Consultancy with an emphasis on Web Design and SEO. Get in touch for a free quote on your next design project or search engine marketing campaign! info@skyboxcreative.com or call us at 619.381.3825

AOL and Nielsen recently released a study which showed that nearly a quarter of all social media messages, and about half of all industry-specific social messages contain links to content. There is definitely a direct relationship between content sharing and brand messaging — a staggering 60% of content-sharing messages mention a brand or product name. At 66%, email remains the primary sharing tool, but social-networking platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, are quickly taking over due to their pervasiveness.

So what is the significance of these numbers? They show that marketers need to use content to become involved in the social conversation — content is what fuels the social media boom, and is therefore key to any marketing buy.

So how can a business take advantage of these tendencies? Here are some tips to maximize the benefits of content sharing:

Blogging: Use relevant keywords to create brief, engaging headlines. Also, you should obviously strive to make your content interesting, but above all, it is most effective to write about a recent topic, or to offer a unique perspective or opinion — readers want to be the first to share in their social circle. Additionally, it has been found that new blogs posted around 7am are most susceptible to sharing.

Facebook: Post every other day for maximum sharing. Avoid technical jargon, and complex phrases — people prefer to read well-written, but simple sentences. When deciding when to make a post, accommodate to the times of highest Facebook activity: early evenings and weekends. Also, try to include graphics or video — these have been shown to generate the most links and sharing.

Twitter: Keep your tweets short and grammatically-correct, but avoid using abbreviations or special terms that may be too technical. Google key words that are effective in marketing (“you”, “free”, “new”, and “great” are a few), and include them in your tweets for best re-tweeting. Also, the best time to promote new blog posts on Twitter is around 10am, weekdays.

About the study: Findings are based on Nielsen’s NM Incite Social Media Monitoring tools, Online Behavior Panel and Attitudinal analysis, tracking more than 10,000 social media messages; and on a survey of more than 1,000 Nielsen Online panel members for 10 consecutive days, December 14-23, 2010.

Skybox Creative, Inc. – Elevate your acclaim with effective brand + web design.

You may have noticed that despite the fact that you have over 300 friends on Facebook, the up-to-date News Feed you see every time you log in seems surprisingly manageable… So how do they do that? Facebook developers use an algorithm called EdgeRank. EdgeRank, also known as “News Feed Optimization“, helps keep the social media outlet simple and keeps people coming back for more. With over 500 million active users spending over 700 billion minutes per month on their website, they’ve turned the concept of social media into something completely different, into a tool with which we guide our lives. Businesses and individuals alike know you have to have a Facebook page to stay on top of the world today.

Is your business up to speed with Social Media? Do you have a customized Facebook profile image? Branded Twitter page? Using a variety of tools, Skybox Ceative can get you up and running with our Cross Media Campaign. For more information, contact us: info@skyboxcteative.com

Want to learn more about Facebook stats, activity and global reach, click here.

Skybox Creative, Inc. – Elevate your business with phenomenal brand + web design.

The article below was published on Ai InSite.

Ai InSite is an online magazine of The Art Institutes, America’s Leader in Creative Education. Several graduates working in the field offered their advice for up-and-coming artists. Angelina Sereno, President of Skybox Creative, among others, were interviewed for the article…

Art, design, and other creative disciplines are just like any other industry — it takes determination and hard work along with talent to gain success. And for all fields marketing is crucial. One of the best ways to market creative work is with social media platforms. Professionals say that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn should be part of any creative professional’s marketing strategy.

“Many times social media allows the artists to truly impart their personality, perspectives, and opinions on whatever they are passionate about to the Internet to be seen by people who share the same views,” says Zebulun M. Wood, a Media Arts & Animation instructor at The Art Institute of Indianapolis.

POKE YOUR CUSTOMERS

Angelina Sereno graduated from The Art Institute of California — San Diego in 2003 with a degree in Advertising and is now president at Skybox Creative, a Web Design and Branding Studio. She says her company uses social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to help build relationships online.

“It has helped keep us in the forefront of people’s minds,” she explains. “Whether they are a potential client or not, if they are thinking about us, they tend to refer their friends and clients to us.”

But social media can be beneficial for artists who may not work at a company but instead do a considerable amount of freelance work.

Read the full article here

The Art Institute InSite Interviews Skybox Creative on how designers can effectively use social media to promote themselves. Read the Q&A below.

1.   Why do you use social media platforms?

We utilize social media to build relationships online that we further strengthen offline and vice versa. Say we go to a networking event and meet a few people, we usually try to add them as a friend on our company Facebook or LinkedIn, this allows us to stay in front of them and open up ongoing dialogue. We also search social media sites for companies/people with similar interests, for example being eco-friendly. We will add them as a friend and then post specials for our green printing company, this way the message is more targeted.

2.   What is the best way for an artist or designer to use these outlets?

Well, a lot of the sites are interwoven now, so it’s important to do a little research and make a list of things to do/profiles to set up/link together. For example, Behance.net allows you to display your portfolio on LinkedIn.com, that’s huge. LinkedIn is still the top Professional social media site, so to be able to have your portfolio displayed on your profile is huge. LinkedIn also offers the option to share your updates on Twitter, we linked this feature, now we primarily use LinkedIn and it will automatically keep our Twitter up-to-date. There are a ton of portfolio sites, like CarbonMade.com, Behance.net, Coroflot.com, etc. I think a designer looking for work should be on all of the top portfolio sites and actively add friends, get involved in discussions, join groups, etc.

Another smart thing to remember is that “to give is to receive”, its a good idea to give recommendations to people you know on LinkedIn, then you can ask for the same in return. Or help a friend get introduced to someone via LinkedIn, these kind of selfless actions can really help in building relationships and helping you get more recognition for yourself. Also when posting updates and links on Facebook for example, try to offer an idea or resource that will help others instead of only being focused on your work.

3.   How has Facebook and other social media outlets affected your business?

It has helped keep us in the forefront of people’s minds. Whether they are a potential client or not, if they are thinking about us, they tend to refer their friends and clients to us when they mention “web design” or “cost effective printing”. We host a lot of networking mixers and this has been a great way to promote the events as well.

4.   Are there certain social media musts for artists and designers or does it depend on the individual?

I think you should pick a few and focus on them. It’s very easy to become overwhelmed with social media because it can really be a full time job. As technology moves, more and more sites will pop up too, so it’s important to try to watch the trends. Sites like Mashable.com help keep you up on the latest trends. There are sites like Ping.fm that allow you to update several profiles at once and other applications like Tweetdeck.com that allow you to streamline the Twitter process, schedule tweets and sort your contacts into groups. One thing we’ve done several times is submit our designs to the Designer Spotlight on iStock. If you used an image from their site in a design, you can submit the artwork. If they accept the design, you get free iStock credit, but more importantly it is a form of recognition you can use to help promote yourself (as profile updates, blog posts, etc.)

5.   Any tips and tricks for successfully using social media for art/design work?

Networking is key to success online and offline. Sites like Meetup.com have great niche groups like “Web Design San Diego”, I would recommend finding groups that have similar interests and attend an event or two each month. Even if you are surrounded by your peers, you might be surprised by how many clients you can get from it. We’ve gotten quite a few clients from web design meetups. Not only can you learn from your peers but since people typically have a specialty, they often need good referral sources for everything they don’t do (and are asked for all the time).

Hope you found this information helpful! Feel free to add us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn!

The Google Toolbar is full of great features including an easy access Search feature, easy Bookmarking, Page Rank information (Google uses a scale of 1-10 to determine a website’s relevancy and importance) and more. Recently, they’ve added a new Share feature which allows you to share a web page with your friends on the most popular Social Media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, Myspace, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Blogger and more…

Share any web page with your friends right from the Toolbar
• Click the Share button on any page and select a service.
• Add an optional personal note and send to your friends.
• You can modify which favorites pop up by going to Share > Settings.

Click Here to Learn More

A few Google Toolbar features:

• Share any web page with your friends right from the Toolbar.
• Contribute and read helpful information on any web page with Google Sidewiki.
• Translate web pages instantly with automatic language detection.

Download the Google Toolbar