The Evolution of Virtual Reality [Infographic]

Imagine being able to transport yourself to a completely different place -- an idyllic beach paradise, a front row seat at a Paul McCartney concert, an unexplored planet -- with the click of a button? Thanks to technological advancements in the world of virtual reality (VR), these immersive experiences define just a small taste of what's possible.

NASA defines VR as “the use of computer technology to create the effect of an interactive three-dimensional world in which the objects have a sense of spatial presence.” And the level of personalization and immersion that VR provides makes it a great opportunity for brands to engage with their tech-savvy audiences. 

In fact, brands such as The North Face, Coca Cola, and Sony Pictures have already started using VR to delight their consumers and build loyalty in ways that are highly innovative and, in some cases, very affordable.

To learn more about how the evolution of virtual reality -- from the 1930s to present day -- check out the infographic from Communications@Syracuse below. (And to learn more about other game-changing trends you should incorporate into your marketing strategy, check out this blog post.)

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2bwTAm5

16 of the Most Creative Business Card Designs From Agencies

The business card isn't dead yet.

As long as there are parties, industry events, and networking opportunities, there will be business cards. And it's important that yours isn't thrown to the bottom of the pile because of a lackluster design.

Whether you work at a bigwig agency or as a freelancer, your business card should make a memorable first impression. To help you out on the inspiration front, we've compiled a list of 16 top-notch business cards from agencies and designers around the world. Ranging from artistically elaborate to decidedly simple, these examples are certain to inspire your next business card redesign.

16 Inspiring Business Card Design Examples

1) Aurora

Featuring a botanical illustration of tropical blooms and a clean sans-serif font, these business cards from Aurora certainly make a stylish first impression. The South African studio specializes in whimsical artwork and design, so it's fitting that their business cards reflect their unique skill set. The cards were designed in-house and include gold embossed details.

Image via Aurora

2) Chomp

In a literal interpretation of the company's name, London-based agency Chomp designed business cards with a bite-size chunk missing from one corner. The shape of the card stock mimics the detail of their logo -- which also bears teeth marks.  

Image via How Design

3) Matheus Dacosta

Brazilian designer Matheus Dacosta puts an artistic spin on traditional business cards, adding kaleidoscopic, hand-painted designs to every individual card. Each miniature work of art is sure to make a memorable impact -- or at the very least, make the recipient reluctant to simply toss it.

Images via Design Milk

4) Nymbl

Nymbl, a 3D design and virtual reality studio, wanted to project a more accessible, playful image in their new marketing materials. To get the job done right, they turned to UK-based agency Big Fan, who spun up a bold, two-tone business card design concept as part of their new branding. The cards feature paper cut-outs on royal purple stock.

Image via Big Fan

5) Wendigo

This video production agency may get its name from a spooky folk creature, but the quality of their business card design is far from terrifying. Designed by the talented folks at The Distillery, these unusual cards put the focus on meticulously detailed, embossed illustration: a feather, a piece of wood, and a beastly skull can be seen behind the contact information. A pair of interlocking antlers -- presumably from the feared Wendigo itself -- form the "W" in the agency's name.

Image via The Distillery

6) Katsy Garcia

Illustrator and graphic designer Katsy Garcia whipped up this simple but effective business card concept for her own personal branding. Instead of displaying her contact information in the usual straightforward format, Garcia serves up a fresh twist, displaying hers in an instantly recognizable text message composition. The resulting effect is equal parts charming and sharply clever.

Image via Katsy Garcia's Behance Portfolio

7) Omelet

In a nod to their native L.A., Omelet created business cards centered around sleek city imagery. The photographs are artfully silhouetted by their company logo -- which if you look closely, is actually an ambigram.

Image via Digiday

8) Counter Creatives

Designed to resemble a classic take-a-number ticket, this inventive business card was devised for Dutch agency Counter Creatives by designer and art director Valery Overhoff. The compact format and unconventional shape called for a creative use of space, and Overhoff manages to feature multiple typefaces and both vertical and horizontal text.

Image via Valery Overhoff's Cargo Collective Portfolio

9) IS Creative Studio

Thanks to airy swipes of neon spray paint, these otherwise minimal business cards from IS Creative Studio make a big impact. The Peru-based agency has developed three iterations of these award-winning cards, increasing the breadth and intensity of the color pallette each time. This most recent version highlights everything from electric pinks to vibrant greens.

Images via IS Creative Studio's Behance Portfolio

10) Confetti Studio

These business cards from Confetti Studio combine two powerful elements -- punchy orange card stock and gold embossed metallics -- to a create a mesmerizing and modern effect. One side of the card is completely covered in gilded speckles, while the other side displays the agency's logo and contact information -- also gilded. They fittingly call the end result "cardfetti."

Image via Confetti Studio

11) Tricota

Buenos Aires-based agency Tricota found an interesting way to highlight the two sides of their business: perforated cards that split in half. Once side features information for their communications and graphic design services, while info for their illustration services appear on the other side. Each half includes a variation of their "T" logo: a typeface "T" for their communications side and and an hand-drawn "T" for their illustration side.

Image via Tricota's Behance Portfolio

12) Tait

When this design studio wanted to give their corporate identity a facelift, they turned to fresh card stock in yellow, smokey blue, and azure. Using minimal text against a sophisticated color palette yields sleek results.

Image via Tait's Behance Portfolio

13) Claire Bruining

Graphic designer Claire Bruining developed these playful business cards for her own personal branding. Splashes of overlapping patterns and colors appear on one side, and Bruining's contact information appears on the reverse in a clean sans serif font. The dark blue text and border adds an unexpected pop to the basic layout.

Image via Claire Bruining's Behance Portfolio

14) Don't Try Studio

Monge Quentin, the Parisian illustrator behind Don't Try Studio, created these lively and colorful business cards to promote his design work. Thanks to an embossing technique, the face of the cards are embellished with confetti-like brush strokes and shapes in a muted orange and blue color scheme. His name appears in a handwritten print. 

Image via Don't Try Studio

15) Bespoke

The logo on these business cards for digital production studio Bespoke is so large, it actually wraps around from the front of the card to the back. A fellow New York agency -- Studio Newwork -- designed these cards to be both minimal and unexpected.

Image via Studio Newwork

16) Atelier Irradié

At first glance, the face of these Atelier Irradié business cards look like otherworldly color swatches. In stark contrast to the metallic, jewel-toned gradient on the front, the back of these cards don't even use ink -- just simple, imprinted text displaying their contact information.

Image via Atelier Irradié's Behance Portfolio

Feature image credit: Atelier Irradié's Behance Portfolio

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2bwEE7s

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How to Improve SEO Using Educational Resources: One Company's Step-by-Step Framework

The holy grail of content marketing and SEO is to be ranked in the top 10 on Google for a high volume search term.

If you accomplish that, your site will enjoy long-lasting, inexpensive organic traffic -- which is an absolutely wonderful thing. That said, SEO is very much a rich get richer game.

So what happens if you are the poor in this scenario? How can you break into the top 10?

Unfortunately, great content isn't always enough. In most cases, you need links from authoritative sites pointing to your content. But how can you build these initial links to help boost your content into the top 10 if no one knows who you are?

Over the past several months, I’ve been experimenting with building links from educational (.edu) resources. Using this approach, I’ve been able to push my blog into the top 10 on Google for several competitive and high volume search terms.

Want to know exactly how I did this? Keep reading.

The EDU Resource Link-Building Framework

In July of 2015, my company started prioritizing content marketing and blogging.

Through the first five months, we blogged a lot, but we were really only targeting low-competition, long-tail keywords with very little search volume. Not too surprisingly, despite our aggressive blogging, we were getting very few visitors from organic search.

In January 2016, we published a post: "100+ Job Boards For Job Seekers and Recruiters." With this post, we tried something new: We targeted the keyword “job boards” -- which gets 10,000 searches a month and has high-authority sites like ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and Monster ranking in the top positions.

Despite the competition, after applying the EDU resource link-building framework, over the next several months the number of referring domains and backlinks shot up.

Because of this, we moved into the top 10 results for the search terms “job boards," “top job boards,” and “best job boards."

And our organic traffic to this post grew 85% over April and May. 

So, what is this technique and how can you do this for your site?

How does it work?

Almost every university, college, and community college has a collection of websites with resources available for faculty, staff and students. These are usually simple pages with lots of links that a department or staff member has created.

For example, check out the site below created by Dr. Mark Gellis and hosted by Kettering University:

This page perhaps looks a little old fashioned, but it’s chock-full of helpful links and is actively updated. Best of all, the domain has a domain authority (DA) of 59.

And there are tons of pages like this. 

The EDU resource link-building framework is a step-by-step process for finding resource pages like this and for getting links from them.

In what follows, I will show you exactly how to do this.

How to Build Valuable EDU Links in 4 Steps

Before I break down the details for each of these steps, here’s an overview of the framework:

• Step 1: Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your resources.
• Step 2: Find matching EDU resources.
• Step 3: Evaluate links and collect emails.
• Step 4: Reach out and get your links.

There you have it. Looks simple enough. Let’s get into how to execute each of these steps.

Step 1: Create a spreadsheet to keep track of your resources.

Before we get into finding and collecting matching EDU resources, we need a place to store all the backlink gold we are going to collect in Step #3 of the framework.

Using Google Docs, create a spreadsheet with the following fields:

• URL - This will be the URL for each resource page we collect.
• Contact Method - This will be either an email or perhaps the URL to a contact form.
• Name - The name of the best contact.
• Contact Date 1 - This will be the date that we contact the owner of the resource.
• Response? - For keeping track of whether you heard back from this resource contact.
• Contact Date 2 - This will be the date of our follow up email to the resource owner.
• Notes - Here we will keep track of anything that may be important regarding our conversation with the resource owner.

Step 2: Finding matching EDU resources.

Now that we have our data collection spreadsheet setup, we need to go find some resources. 

We are going to use Google to find potential matching resources. To do so, use a combination of the following queries to identify potential matches:

• “keyword” intitle:resources
• “keyword” intitle:resources intitle:submit
• site:*.edu “keyword” resources

Your keyword does not have to perfectly match the article you are trying to get links to. If your content is really specific, you may want to move up the topic hierarchy and use something a little more general. For example, let’s say you wrote an article about HMO versus PPO health insurance, then you will probably get better results searching for a more general term like “health care.”

However, it is important that the EDU resources you find here are relevant to your article. Relevancy is one of the most important characteristics for quality backlinks.

Step 3: Evaluate links and collect emails.

This is the most labor-intensive part of this framework, and unfortunately there’s not really a better method than brute force.

Evaluating Links

You will need to open each search result and check to see if it’s a resource page that is a likely fit for a link to your site. If the page looks like it has potential, then add the site to your spreadsheet, filling in the URL column.

One thing to note here: The number of outbound links from the EDU page does impact the quality of a potential backlink. Fewer links is better, so prioritize those resources.

Collecting Emails

Next, you need to figure out who to contact.

Sometimes, you’ll get lucky, and the owner of the page will have an email available directly on that resource page. If you do not see an email readily available, then the next thing to look for is a “Contact” or “Contact Us” link. This will usually be available in the top navigation bar, side navigation or bottom navigation menu.

Sometimes this will take you to a contact form instead of an email. This is fine, just add the URL of the form into the spreadsheet under the "Contact Method" column.

If you are still not able to find a way to contact the EDU, then also take a look for links to things like About Us, Staff, or Directory listings. These will often lead you to an email contact or contact form. Make sure you also keep track of the contact name if you find one -- although it’s not strictly necessary.

You can try using a tool like BuzzMarker to speed up this process. It’s a Chrome plugin that will crawl a page you are on looking for emails. However, I find in comparison to a human eye, BuzzMarker is going to miss a lot of link building opportunities.

Step 4: Reach out and get your links.

In this final step, we are going to go back to our spreadsheet and go through each contact and reach out to them. This is the tricky part, as you want to be sure that your outreach and intent is very clear. No one wants to help out a scam artist looking to build shady links, so be sure to highlight the fact that you've done your homework, and that the suggestion you're providing is both relevant and valuable. 

To help you understand what that type of outreach looks like, check out the templates I use below:

1st Email:

Subject: Your Resource Page

Hi NAME,

I stumbled across your site URL while doing some research on TOPIC.

I wanted to give you a heads up about an article I recently published: YOUR PAGE

I think it could be a good resource for your page. If you are still updating this site, I wanted to see if you'd be willing to consider adding my article as a resource?

Either way, keep up the awesome work!

Cheers,

YOUR NAME

If I do not receive a response within two days, then I send a follow-up email, which will be a response to my original email. The second email is essential. I always get a better response rate on this email because people feel guilty about ignoring my first email.

2nd Email:

Subject: RE: Your Resource Page

Hi NAME,

I just wanted to send a quick follow up and see if you had an opportunity to look at that post I sent you. If not, no problem.

If you do a get a few minutes, I'd love to hear whether you think it might be an appropriate resource for your career resources.

Details here: YOUR PAGE

All the best,

YOUR NAME

Note the language I used here: Phrases like "If not, no problem" and "whether you think it might be an appropriate resource" help to demonstrate that you're just trying to help them, not spam them. 

You can use my exact templates or craft your own, but here are a couple of best practices for EDU outreach to keep in mind:

• Keep your email short and to the point.
• Resource pages are created for outbound utility links. As long as your page is a good fit, the author of the page should appreciate your suggested link. Don’t be too shy about asking for a link but don’t be too pushy.
• Make sure you keep track of your responses because a lot of the time you may receive a soft commitment to reviewing your post or linking to you.
• Follow up and re-open the conversation with any soft commitments a month or two later. I did this recently, and was able to score a couple more links.

Using the exact templates above for the outreach I did for "100+ Job Boards For Job Seekers and Recruiters," I received a 17% response rate, built 8 EDU backlinks, and got social media shares to the students of two different universities.

Why Does This Work?

There are a few different reasons why this is so effective ...

• High Domain Authority: Most of these EDU sites have been around for many years and as a result have great domain authority. This is important because since the quality of the sites from Google’s eyes is good, it doesn’t take that many links to have a major impact on your search rankings.
• Low Friction: Often these pages are controlled by a single person, so once you get them to agree to add your link, the turnaround is quite fast.
• Easy Ask: The resource pages you are collecting with this framework are setup for outgoing links. Provided you are giving the owner something that will be of value to their audience, they will be happy to link to you because you are making their page better.

Time to Test It Out

You may be thinking that this seems like a lot of work to score a handful of backlinks, but the reality is, it is a lot of work if you want to rank in the top 10 on Google.

It doesn’t happen by magic. It takes consistent, proactive effort. And if you want to build long-lasting search value with the content you produce, you have to focus on content promotion.

I believe that EDU resource link building is one of the most effective means to do this. Within a few months of using this framework, we have increased our organic traffic by a factor of 10 with a handful of blog posts. And now you can do the same.

I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions, so share them in the comments below or reach out via Twitter: @seanfalconer.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2btR1mC

Can You Stay Agile as Your Agency Grows? 5 Tips for Scaling Up

It's a priority for almost every agency to scale up and attract larger and more prestigious clients, as well as the best talent.

And change is inevitable as you grow, and it should be embraced, but how do you make sure you remain agile while scaling from a small to a medium-size agency, or from medium to a large one?

How to Grow and Still Keep Your Agency Agile

Learn to Work Collaboratively

Connectivity and innovation in technology are changing the way agencies work -- for the better -- and you'll need to embrace this movement as you grow your team and number of clients. 

To start with, you should be using a project management tool to make every project visible to your team and where applicable, clients as well. Luckily, there are a lot of options available, such as Basecamp, Active Collab, and many more. Implementing a system like this means that your team and clients can keep track of what tasks are on deck as well as delivery dates.

In addition, collaborating on documents is something that can save time and reduce the back and forth that occurs when working separately on the same documents. I am a big advocate for Google Docs, but there are other alternatives. It's particularly useful when there are several team members working on a pitch or proposal document.

Remain Transparent

Transparency may not be the first thing that comes to mind when talking about remaining agile; however, it's important from both a team and client perspective. As you grow, people begin to feel more disconnected from leadership and clients and from knowing what's really going on in the company. 

Implementing collaborative project management is a good first step torward being transparent as it allows complete visibility into a project and gives clarity on everyone’s responsibility for each element of a project or campaign. 

Now, what level of transparency you put on the table is completely up to you, but I believe in putting as much transparency on the table as you can. Introducing something such Slack into your workflows means you can make internal communication visible to anyone in the company, and if it's the right fit for your agency, you can even do the same thing with your clients.

Creating a private channel in Slack for each client will allow the operational team and the client to get a full view of all conversations about their account. This can be scary, but it's equally empowering. If you want to give it a try, roll it out slowly. Test it with one client you have a strong relationship at first. You might be surprised at the results!

Define Your Culture

Building a great culture is tough -- really tough. But if you can get it right, you'll reap the benefits. This is especially true during high growth periods where the agency team can feel the stress as the limits of the company are tested. 

It's easy to lose sight of your digital agency's culture as you grow and become busier, focusing on delivering more work for clients. But you should make culture a priority, remembering to adhere to your core values. 

That's why it's so important to define your culture from the start. As you scale, these values, ideas, and attitudes will be imparted on new hires and used during hiring to vet candidates. This is what allows you to remain agile, helping new employees to immediately understand what the agency stands for, how people interact internally and with clients, and what the ultimate goal they are working toward is. 

Focus on the Business Over Financials

People do their best work when they are in an environment they feel inspired and comfortable in. If you want to build an agency that continues to produce amazing results for clients, focus on the business, not the financials.

I am not saying that you should ignore cash flow. Cash is oxygen for an agency looking to scale. However, the focus should be on building a great agency, not just bringing in revenue. This type of financial pressure can create a toxic environment. Happier staff who truly enjoy working with your clients will do more for bringing in more new business than anything else. 

This can be a tricky one to keep on top of because more revenue and more new business is alluring, especially if your goal is growth. But remember that you want to scale while also staying true to your values and delivering great results for clients. By focusing on this, you can both retain your culture and grow the agency.

Don’t Build Walls

As your staff number increases, it can be easy for barriers to be erected between teams, which often results in a lack of communication between departments. This causes duplicate efforts and can result in mixed messages to clients as teams work on the same accounts but without communicating with one another. 

This is a difficult thing to fix once it's in place, so watch for signs of problems and try to implement fixes before it becomes ingrained in how people work.

The responsibility for this often rests with the leadership on each team -- make sure they are communicating with one another and are working to instill the company culture in their team members. And create processes that make it easy yet encourage different departments to work together and rely on each other.  

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2bktW4b