Category: Digital Marketing

Back to Basics: A Breakdown of the Four Most-Used File Types

Posted on November 26, 2024 by Mary Aimone - Business Tips, Digital Marketing, Graphic Design

PNG, SVG, OMG!

Most of us don’t pause to think about a file type—unless our latest print project comes out blurry or discolored. And if the issue isn’t caught in time, using the wrong file type can become a costly, time-consuming error.

If you’re like me, your Downloads folder is a haphazard collection of screenshots, images and logo files collected during busy workdays. Utilizing the correct file type (after finding it in that jungle of a Downloads folder) is one of the most important aspects of a well-executed design project.

As a graphic designer, I want to help others understand the intricacies of file types. Knowing when to ask for or supply the right file type for your project will improve communications and streamline the design process. So, let’s review the four most common file types and their use cases together!

– Claudia Bleess, Giant Graphic Designer

Image Files

Image files, also known as raster files, are widely accessible, fixed-resolution files made up of pixels. Image files are commonly used for photographs, web graphics, complex art and printed pieces that don’t require scaling. When enlarged beyond their original resolution, image files can appear blurry or pixelated, as they can’t be scaled without losing quality.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

JPEGs are image files with white (non-transparent) backgrounds that can be applied for print and digital uses. JPEG files have varying resolutions and small, compressed file sizes, which are great for storage and digital sharing purposes but can present challenges with blurriness or pixelation when scaled.

Common Use Cases (Print and Digital):

Color-rich photography
Detailed or gradient images
Digital image sharing for newsletters or emails
Social media graphics

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

PNGs, image files with transparent background capabilities and larger file sizes than JPEGs, are ideal for digital and web materials that don’t require scaling. These files exist in RGB color mode (the standard for digital uses) and are not suitable for printed materials, which are produced using CMYK ink colors.

If a PNG is provided for a print project, it must be converted to CMYK color mode and resaved as a JPEG—this is a simple fix, but the image resolution may be too low for high-quality print outcomes, and the color conversion may not be an exact match!

Common Use Cases (Digital Only):

Web visuals
Logos and icons
Images or graphics with text or transparency
Intricate artwork

Vector-Based Files

Vector-based files, which are best for scalable designs such as logos, typography, illustrations and icons, have the highest resolution possible for print and digital media. They’re often the preferred file type for web design and large printed pieces where scalability and quality are crucial.

Rather than using pixels, these files are created using mathematical equations to define shapes, lines and colors. Vector files can be scaled indefinitely without losing image quality. They can also be resaved as almost any file type, including JPEG, PNG and PDF. Ask the graphic designer in your life if they have a crush on any file types, and they’re sure to say, “Vector-based!”

EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)

EPS files are a designer’s first choice for scalable designs like logos and high-quality illustrations for print. They aren’t ideal for web use cases, as web browsers don’t natively support EPS files, and their large file sizes can significantly slow load times.

EPS file access is limited to those with graphic design platforms like Adobe Illustrator, so most non-designers can’t preview or open these files, but they can be resaved as accessible image files and other vector-based files like Ai and SVG.

Common Use Cases:

Scalable logos
Complex illustrations
Banners, billboards, posters and other large-scale printed projects
Business cards, product packaging and other smaller intricate designs

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

SVGs are vector-based files formatted specifically for web applications. SVG files offer a simpler, more easily compressible structure than EPS files by omitting print-specific features that can significantly increase file sizes. They can be manipulated with CSS and JavaScript to enable dynamic and interactive web components, making them the ideal choice for responsive web design and scalable, simple graphics.

However, as the complexity of images or graphics increases, SVG files can become very large and slow load times. For photography, complex graphics and intricate artwork, image files like JPEGs or PNGs offer more richness and realism.

Common Use Cases:

Responsive web design across devices
Scalable logos and icons
Animations and interactive elements such as charts and graphs
Infographic visuals, diagrams and other flat, stylized illustrations
Digital-to-print assets that require cohesion across web and printed materials

That’s It… Kind of!

While this is just the tip of the iceberg, having a base understanding of these four most-used file types and their use cases will streamline design communications on your next project. Happy creating!

About the Author

Claudia Bleess is a passionate graphic designer who solves business and marketing problems with creative design solutions. Many of her designs are inspired by listening to music while working—as evidenced by her 86 Spotify playlists (and counting).

3 Key Content Creation Insights from MozCon 2024

Posted on June 26, 2024 by Sally Carlson - Content Strategy, Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Strategic Marketing

In June 2024, I had the absolute pleasure of attending my first MozCon. My mind was blown several times by how deep the SEO world actually is, and I was pleased by how many talks underscored the importance of knowing your audience.

Understanding who your ideal targets are and what motivates them is an essential part of strategic marketing. Read on for 3 content creation insights gleaned from MozCon 2024.

MozCon sign in front of a window overlooking the Seattle Convention Center

Knowing HOW your audience searches will help you craft compelling content

Garret Sussman, Demand Generation Manager at iPullRank, gave an eye-opening talk breaking down the psychology of search. He detailed various biases influencing how we search and the results we receive.

For example, asking the internet, “Is coffee healthy for you?” will yield vastly different results than “Is coffee bad for your health?” The distinction is important. It challenges marketers to remember their psychology coursework and return to the consumer’s mind.

Watch out for biases that could be influencing search results:

Confirmation bias—Consumers may choose search results supporting what they already believe.
Position bias—Consumers tend to interact with the first few items listed on a search engine results page (SERP).
Familiarity heuristic—Consumers favor familiar brands. If they’ve seen them often, they’ll likely gravitate toward them.
Authority bias—Consumers tend to trust authorities even if they’re not accurate.
Halo effect—Consumers are more apt to feel positive about products, brands and people if they’re affiliated with a brand they already trust.

What does this mean for content creators and marketers?

We need to dive deeper into our target audiences and develop a true understanding of who they are, what motivates them, their likes and dislikes, the media they consume and potential biases that might influence decision-making. We also need to develop relevant online content despite (or perhaps due to) their cognitive biases.

How does AI factor in? Consumers are getting more comfortable using AI-powered large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT to search for information, and they’re asking longer and more complicated questions than they do with traditional search engines.

Using AI to search can lead to even more bias. Lean in with strategic keywords, partnerships and affiliations to ensure your ideal target audience connects with your brand, and be sure to double-check the results—AI isn’t always right.

Tapping into emotions can drive impressive conversions

Everyone loves nostalgia, and it is everywhere these days. A simple scroll through social channels will show countless content creators parodying the 80s, 90s and 2000s, much to Millennial and Gen X delight. Big brands are doing the same things, and it works because of the way it makes consumers feel.

In The Power of Emotion, Talia Wolf, Founder and Chief Optimizer of GetUplift, reminded us that everyone makes decisions based on emotions, even in the world of B2B.

People are eight times more likely to buy a more expensive product or service if they easily see the personal value it provides. While features, cost and impact hold weight, decisions boil down to categories:

Internal motivation/self-image—How will this product or service make me feel?
External motivation/reputation—How will this product or service influence how other people think or feel about me?

What’s a marketer to do? Focus on the WHY. What’s in it for your customer? How will your product or service make them feel or be perceived in the workplace? How will it improve their lives? Leverage emotions to drive conversions.

Step 1: Make it about the customer—Conduct audience research to uncover and leverage key consumer insights.
Step 2: Use consumer insights to audit your strategy—Is your content relatable? Does it hit the WHY? What’s missing?
Step 3: Weave emotion into your content—Tell stories. Make it impactful. Inspire your audience to feel good about themselves and your solution.
Step 4: Weave emotion into your design—Use powerful images. Leverage design and UX to guide audiences to desired actions.

By honing in on emotional outcomes and placing customers at the center of our narratives, we can move into more meaningful content that actually resonates. It’s not only about what we can offer. Instead, it’s how our solution will improve our customers’ lives.

How does AI factor in? AI can be a powerful tool to help us better understand specific target audiences. AI resources like SparkToro and BuzzSumo were designed for audience research, giving marketers an inside look at how specific groups approach purchase decisions. We can then use those insights to create targeted content that drives conversions.

Behind the AI Curtain: Insights into the Invisible

It was interesting and refreshing to hear Britney Muller, Founder of Data Sci 101, describe AI as lazy, pattern-making machines. She urged conferencegoers to stay skeptical because while AI is a huge technological advancement transforming the world, it’s not perfect—not by a long shot.

Should we be using it in marketing? Yes. Should we completely trust it? No. Remember, AI crawls the entire internet and serves the most likely solutions to queries. The internet is as full of misinformation as it is fact, so it is essential to remember that LLMs are not actually search engines.

✅ AI/LLMs are good with:

Language translation
Content summarization
Brainstorming
Question-answering
Repurposing content for different mediums
Simplifying long or complex text
Correcting spelling and grammar

❌ AI/LLMs are not good with:

Common sense
High-level strategy
Reasoning and logic
Emotional intelligence
Anything they haven’t been specifically trained to complete

AI must be trained in order to improve—we want it to improve so it can eventually complete more labor-intensive tasks, leaving us time to focus on strategy and creativity. It’s important to note that AI reflects and magnifies its training data, so it is essential AI be fed high-quality content from the start.

Marketers can help improve AI by submitting detailed prompts and providing feedback on whether the AI tool hit the mark. In addition, be wary of sharing proprietary information. Once AI knows it, there’s no control over how it’ll be used.

How can we get the best results from AI? Write better prompts. Explain tasks as you would to teammates, provide examples and describe your audience. Be as detailed as possible to hone in on the right target audience.

Final Reflections on MozCon 2024

I highly recommend this conference for strategic marketers! The world of SEO is changing at lightning speed, and content creators must stay at the forefront or be lost in the dust.

These content creation insights from MozCon 2024 are the tip of the iceberg, with many more talks delving into technical and local aspects of SEO. Check out the Moz Blog for daily recaps (Day 1 Recap, Day 2 Recap) and keep learning.

How to Execute a Successful UGC Strategy

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Sophie Anderson - Digital Marketing, User-Generated Content

As we discussed in our previous blog on user-generated content (UGC), this tactic can be an incredibly powerful way to maximize your reach, influence and exposure. The key to executing a successful UGC strategy lies in understanding and avoiding a few potential pitfalls. Let’s take a look at how we can successfully overcome them for excellent results.

How to Execute a Successful UGC Strategy Graphic

Through social media posts and videos to blogs, podcasts and more, the marketing world is embracing UGC.

Many brands are using it to their advantage by engaging with the content, sharing it through various marketing mediums (think social platforms and email newsletters), and utilizing it in their advertisements.

For all intents and purposes, it almost seems UGC has become a way to harness the power of word of mouth marketing… without needing face-to-face interactions with customers and clients.

Instead, the cultivation of organically (and sometimes paid) created content from real users does the talking for you.

With the impressive amount of UGC benefits, it begs the question: is there downside to UGC? Like any other type of marketing or content creation, there are a few. But with the right action steps, you can strategically overcome these pitfalls to maximize your UGC success.

Possible Downsides of UGC

Negative Content

Most UGC is organically created by users, customers, clients, employees and other brand advocates. This means the creators have most of the control and, as such, companies may occasionally be subject to negative content.

Negative reviews, testimonials, social media posts and blog posts are certainly a risk associated with embracing UGC.

However, while you may instinctively rush to remove the negative content (if you have the opportunity to do so), we recommend if it’s appropriate, that you keep most of it published.

This provides valuable feedback, increases your authenticity and can help amplify the sincerity of positive content. You may possibly learn something about your brand positioning, or product offering.

How to Address Negative UGC

Use negative content as an opportunity to reconnect with your audience. Show them you’re not afraid to listen to customer feedback and acknowledge their user experience. Ask them what you could do better, and make the necessary changes if you feel it’s important to do so.

Being open to negative feedback illustrates to your prospective customers that your brand cares about their well-being and is always willing to improve and learn.

UGC Can Be Anonymous

In some cases, anonymous users or fake profiles may publish negative content, such as comments, reviews and social media posts.

On social media platforms, these people are often labeled as “trolls” and, without context, the content can be harmful. This can put your real, hard-earned reputation and positive content at risk, as it could cause others to second guess its authenticity.

How to Address Anonymously-Posted Content

If this happens, it can sometimes be hard to address because you don’t know who they are or even if they’re a real customer, or user.

While there’s not much you can do about anonymous users or fake profiles posting negative content, you can attempt to verify their identities, reply in a constructive way or create steps to have customers verified before publishing content (this often works best with product or service reviews on your website or an e-commerce platform).

For more information regarding the legalities of removing harmful or damaging content, take a look at this blog from Kohrman Jackson & Krantz.

Monitoring Can Be Time-Consuming

Consistently monitoring UGC can be incredibly time-consuming, especially for large brands with huge audiences that consistently create and provide reviews, testimonials, blogs, social posts and other forms of content.

However, foregoing regular monitoring can be a major oversight, as unaddressed negative content may be left to fester and spread, which could lead to a major PR mess.

How to Optimize UGC Monitoring

You need to keep an eye on your brand’s online presence, activities and audience engagement. In some cases, this may mean hiring a new team member as an online community brand manager.

You’ll find the benefits of content moderation and management far outweigh the cons, as you can keep spam content to a minimum while upholding your brand reputation and authenticity.

UGC is a Legal Labyrinth

As mentioned above, one of the major disadvantages of UGC is that you have little control over what content is being created. This also comes along with several legal issues that you need to be aware of when integrating UGC into your marketing strategy.

Though your brand may be tagged in a social post, associated with specific branded hashtags or featured in customer photos, you do not have the right to use that content as you please. The sole owner of that content rests with its original creator.

How to Navigate UGC Legalities

Before sharing and publishing UGC on your website, social feeds, email newsletters and other forms of marketing mediums, you must obtain explicit permission from the content owner.

This could be as simple as getting a “yes” to the question, “can we share this content on our marketing channels?”

And don’t forget—if you share on social media, it’s best practice to give credit to the original creator. This also benefits your brand by creating a sense of community and inclusion, prompting other customers, users and clients to share their experience.

Amplifying Your Marketing Strategy with UGC

Take your marketing potential to the next level with UGC. The Giant Voices digital marketing team is experienced in helping brands get the most out of UGC, including content moderation and management, implementation and optimization.

Three Helpful Tips for Starting Out on Social Media

Posted on November 8, 2019 by Sophie Anderson - Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Starting your business out on social, but not sure where to begin? Check out our top three tips to help market your plan for social media success.

Three Helpful Tips for Starting Out on Social Media

How many times have you checked Facebook today? As you’re reading this, you probably have a few unread messages on LinkedIn… and no doubt one or two notifications on Instagram. Oh, and don’t forget to check out those trending ideas on Pinterest!

Social media has become ingrained into our daily routine—so it comes as no surprise that it’s the perfect platform for businesses to share their missions, connect with customers and provide accessible communication on a digital landscape.

But if you’re just starting out, or if you’ve been neglecting your social media platforms, we’ve got three helpful tips for making social media worth your while.

Engage with the right platforms for your business.

Most social networks have already established niches, with similar types of audiences using the platform for similar purposes. For example:

LinkedIn is primarily a B2B platform for professionals.
Facebook is primarily a B2C platform that’s established enough to offer a source of social familiarity for a wide range of communities.
TikTok is a highly-visual, B2C platform with an audience made up of younger generations, like Gen Z and Millennials.
Instagram is a popular B2C platform for a generally younger demographic.
Twitter (aka X) is arguably both a B2C and B2B platform used for strong engagement.
Pinterest is a strong B2B and B2C visual platform that thrives on generating traffic back to a business’ site.

There’s also Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr and plenty more—the list goes on as new and emerging platforms are appearing almost daily.

Yet, regardless of how many platforms there are, each has an established position in the social media market. Meaning if your business is focused on B2B, it may be in your best interest to engage on LinkedIn and Twitter to reach your target audience, rather than spending time trying to establish a following on a platform like Instagram.

It’s better to focus your time and energy on fewer platforms than trying to conquer them all—because ultimately, you want to live where your target audience is.

You’ll see the most success on social media when you have a deep understanding of who your target audience is before you jump into a platform.

It takes time and energy when coming to a full understanding of your customers’ insights (we’ll save that for another blog post), but it’s also a critical step in ensuring the success and value of your business on social.

Create GIANT content that connects.

High-quality content makes connections. While it may seem simple, it can be tricky to put into practice.

Every post you share on social matters, as each platform leverages an algorithm that is designed to look at the percentage of people who are engaging with your content. The more people who share, like, comment and engage with your post, the more it will appear across your target audiences’ feed.

It’s no secret that the social media landscape is a crowded one, but that doesn’t mean that the more you post content the better your business will perform. The truth is, you must post valuable, relevant and high-quality content to earn valuable connections with your target audience.

Take the time to research and understand what content resonates with your target audience. Think about how your business can improve their and focus on establishing relationships with individuals who matter.

Always value quality over quantity.

People often ask, “How can I increase my following?” We counter it with the real question, “Why do you want to increase your following?”

While it’s great to look at your business page and see 4,000 followers, the true measure of success is an active and engaged following that interacts with your posts, purchases your products and uses your services.

A “following” is a vanity metric, meaning it’s a number that doesn’t necessarily correlate to what really matters. Metrics like average engagement rate, overall revenue and profit or your conversion rate hold much more value.

Even if you only have 100 followers, if they are the right followers who support your mission, are great social influencers, and are people you have an established relationship with, then they’re the connections that pay off in the long run.

Elevate Your Social Media Success

If you want to succeed in the social media landscape, start by establishing your goals.

How are you going to utilize the platform to attract, engage, entertain and inform?

Learn what platform(s) offer you the strongest opportunities to connect with your target audience, and invest your time and energy in creating amazing connections that focus on building relationships that will help you achieve your ambition.

Lastly, whether it’s the content you create or the connections you make, always focus on quality over quantity to help fast-track your business down the road to social media success.

A Simple Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Sophie Anderson - Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What is it and why is it important? At its most basic, SEO is the process of ensuring the content on your website is relevant to the people you want to visit your site.

If we dig a bit deeper, it’s about optimizing all content on a website, evaluating all sources that lead to a website, and ensuring an overall positive website experience. These are known as On-Site SEO, Off-Site SEO, and Technical SEO, respectively.

Optimizing these aspects of your website improves the website’s relevance as evaluated by search engines. Because the goal is for search engines (Google being the most common) to send people to your website, SEO helps ensure the search engine’s algorithms view your website as worthy of traffic.

For the purposes of the examples below let’s assume you are a food blogger.

On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO is the tactic that is familiar to most people. Write content, use some keywords, get traffic. Right? Years ago this would have sufficed. As tech gets more sophisticated and our digital needs evolve, algorithms are constantly changing to dig much deeper.

The words you use are still important but how you use them, how you stack up compared to other websites using the same terms, and how you apply that content to your website has become increasingly important.

Let’s say you, the food blogger, and a competitor both wrote similar articles about the pros and cons of cooking in cast iron. You made sure to use the term “cast iron” in your page title, you’ve used additional relevant context in your header tag, your article is comprehensive but formatted for easy reading (not too long, not too short) and you’ve used rich images that each have clear descriptions.

Your competitor has a catchy but ultimately irrelevant page title, forgot to include a header tag, utilized low-quality images, and their article veered off-topic multiple times.

When a search engine reviews both articles, it will easily be able to put your article into context and understand what to show to a prospective viewer. Your page will show up higher on the search results page when someone searches for cast iron because you optimized your content.

Off-Site SEO

Off-Site SEO is the evaluation of what other websites are sending traffic to your website—these are called backlinks and they have become increasingly important as it has become easier to buy links and traffic.

For example, let’s say the magazine Bon Appétit loves your mashed potatoes recipe and publishes a link to your blog in a “Thanksgiving Favorites” online article. That website is highly relevant, produces a lot of original content and has a high SEO ranking. That traffic will increase the amount of confidence that a search engine has in your website.

On the other hand, have you ever clicked on a recipe link on Facebook only to be brought to a website where you need to click on yet another link to get to the actual recipe? These are considered link farms and are not highly regarded—they fall more into the spam (no food pun intended) realm.

Having too much traffic coming from spammy sources can lower your authority in the eyes of a search engine. There are a variety of off-site tactics that SEO experts use, both to increase links from reputable sources as well as disavow links from sketchy sources.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is all about ensuring a website is usable. In this fast-paced world, your website needs to load quickly, provide a good user experience on a cell phone, be secure, and be seen by search engines.

These are just a few of the many aspects of technical SEO. This is the tedious work that gets overlooked too often.

How much authority would you have as a food blogger if you published a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and didn’t include chocolate chips? How successful would your website be if you didn’t categorize the recipes by type or include a table of contents menu?

That’s how search engines evaluate a website. Your website needs code that tells search engines that your website is open for business. When search engines crawl your website, they need to be able to see that your website is user-friendly, organized coherently and has active pages associated that don’t contain error messages.

Building a Strong SEO Strategy

SEO efforts are an integral part of any comprehensive marketing strategy but can often get overlooked and underestimated because SEO does not require any actual paid media. It’s also a long play and a constantly moving target.

In a world where digital marketing strategies can produce instant results, it can be difficult to wait months to see the results of optimization only to have Google make a big algorithm shift. Those algorithm shifts, however frustrating, are why employing an agency with SEO expertise should always be part of any marketing strategy.

If you are ready to implement a strong SEO strategy, get in touch with our team.