Media Contour is a multi-disciplined design studio that works and writes about issues, trends and strategies that affect businesses and the design industry. Our goal is to deliver cutting edge, usable information that will ultimately add to your online success.
On Monday, October 10, Our good friends (and neighbors) got together for a little meet and greet sponsored by the folks over at Yelp at The Atwater Crossing eatery in Atwater Village. It was great to see our little Los Angeles web design team meet and mingle with the beest of them. Here are some photos of the gang doing what we do second best (next to providing top notch branding and design services of course!)
“Anything given away has no value.”
Like all teenagers, I would ask (practically demand) my Dad to give me money to go out with my friends every weekend, and he would give me a list of chores and hit me with that quote. When my Dad passed this wisdom on to me as a youngster, I didn’t know what he meant. I just thought it was his own clever way of snaking out of giving me $20 and getting his car washed; but being a small-business owner who worked from the ground-up he knew something I didn’t: the appreciation of incentive for work. Now, as an adult working in the world of social media, I see his advice at work.
As I sift through my clients Twitter feeds and Facebook walls, I can pretty much pick out articles and reposts written by interns versus those being paid for their work. Part of it is skill, another part is effort.
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The average Joe-Businessman is sure to find blogging to be another thing to-do in an already busy workweek. Blogs are a great way to build content and add weight to your site, especially for search engine page rankings. They can also act as a human face to a big corporation, thus building a rapport with clients who may have thought otherwise about your company. If you’re just as busy as the aforementioned businessman, this is where hiring a blogger would come in; or someone from HR steps in and handles the legwork. But who is qualified for writing what? Are you getting what you’re paying for? Ahead are some answers and tips about blogging for your business.
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Google+ is quickly losing steam. But how could it keep up with the momentum it was building? In a recent article from Mashable, Todd Wasserman cites Experian Hitwise in saying that Google+ users are spending less and less time using the program since its limited release last month. Apparently the new car smell is wearing off faster than Google would probably like but that’s not the only reason people aren’t using the social networking upstart as much. For as social as Google+ is, it seems to lack a certain bit of connection between its inhabitants, what is it…
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So you’ve set up a plethora of social media platforms online. You’ve got a Facebook, a Twitter, and you’ve created a blog. Now what? How do you let people know you exist here? Here are a few tactics to get your going and how to maintain (and build upon those relationships). (more…)
In the wake of the recent Facebook vs. Google scandal, it may be naive to suggest that we’re “trending” toward anything remotely kinder or gentler in the world of business ethics. However, it does make me wonder whether Gordon Gekko-style cutthroat capitalism is the most effective way to do business in our increasingly web-based culture. In the social media sphere, where everybody is equally vulnerable to defamatory attacks—and perhaps equally vulnerable to being exposed as the perpetrator—are other models more effective?
I would argue that there is a new ethos emerging in the web business space driven, in part at least, by the ever-evolving and collectively scripted rules of social media.
Here are just few tips on how to promote your brand using social media (that don’t involve planting scandalous blogs about your competition!). (more…)
Media Contour is proud to be the winner in this year’s Davey Awards Gold in web design and promotion category! Congratulations team!
We treated our website redesign like we would for our clients. We carefully reviewed the previous design then highlighted its strengths and eliminated its weaknesses. Most importantly, it was a team effort. Matt, our CEO and managing director, organized the content and focused MC’s selling points. Alex, Luke and Victor designed and developed the final product. Gaberial came in at the ended and added his Javascript magic. The site is powered by SilverStripe’s CMS.
About the Davey Award
“We were once again excited to honor and recognize the amazing work submitted into this year’s Davey Awards and are humbled by the exceptional work we have grown accustomed to seeing year after year. This year’s competition saw an increasing diversified pool of entries and the high quality of work continues to push the limits of creative possibilities throughout the industry,” noted Linda Day, Executive Director of the IAVA.
The Davey Awards is an international creative award focused exclusively on honoring outstanding creative work from the best small firms worldwide. Entries are judged to evaluate distinction in creative work. In determining Gold and Silver winners, entries are judged on their merits based on a standard of excellence as determined by the IAVA, considering the category entered. A category may have multiple Gold and Silver Winners, or may have none. Entries are scored on a ten point scale by the judges. Generally, Gold Winners receive a score of 9.0 or above and Silver Winners receive a score of 7.0 to 8.9. No more than 10% of entries will be awarded a Gold Davey. Best in Show selections are made by the Academy from the pool of Gold Winners, based on their scoring and other elements of merit as determined by the Academy. The judges will award 10 Best in Show honors, one for each medium. Please visit www.daveyawards.com for a complete list of winners.
At one time or another, we have all visited a website that is so confusing and poorly-designed that it is not worth wasting any time or effort on. Some webmasters are so focused on collecting information from their users that they overload their visitors with requests and instructions. Other websites are simply annoying. Listed here are some of the most common features of a website that frustrate visitors.
Practically every business knows they need to keep their services and offerings fresh and up-to-date if they want to please their customers. The same is true for websites. Search engines and visitors alike become bored with old, outdated websites that fail to offer anything new. Broken links, antiquated news and dated content cripple your website, impairing your ability to attract new traffic.
Today it seems as though there is a race for businesses to get online. Sure, there are templates that allow you to “fill in the blanks,” add a few stock photos and throw up a website real quick. This is the cheap way to do it, but what most businesses don’t realize is that when you use a template that thousands of other websites have used, you’re business is also seen as “cheap.”
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