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2019 Color of the Year

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Pantone has officially announced that the color of the year for 2019 is “Living Coral,” otherwise known by its official Pantone code 16-1546.

Vibrant, yet mellow, Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral embraces us with warmth and nourishment to provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment.

In reaction to the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life, we are seeking authentic and immersive experiences that enable connection and intimacy. Sociable and spirited, the engaging nature of Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral welcomes and encourages lighthearted activity. Symbolizing our innate need for optimism and joyful pursuits, Pantone 16-1546 Living Coral embodies our desire for playful expression.

Representing the fusion of modern life, Pantone Living Coral is a nurturing color that appears in our natural surroundings and at the same time, displays a lively presence within social media.

For 20 years, Pantone’s Color of the Year has influenced product development and purchasing decisions in multiple industries, including fashion, home furnishings, and industrial design, as well as product, packaging, and graphic design.

The Color of the Year selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. To arrive at the selection each year, Pantone’s color experts at the Pantone Color Institute comb the world looking for new color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, popular travel destinations, as well as new lifestyles, playstyles, and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures, and effects that impact color, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention.

Apis_Productions_WordPress_5.0

Why We Won’t Be Updating to WordPress 5.0 … Quite Yet

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WordPress 5.0 was just released and this update comes with tons of new features and a few major changes to the system. As exciting as this brand new version sounds, we at Apis Productions will be holding off on updating our clients’ sites — right away, though.

WordPress 5.0 has never been tested with most current plugins and themes and is likely to be buggy, potentially causing both minor and in some cases, big-time issues. Thankfully, WordPress is not automatically updated to this version. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this and update sites once we have fully tested and confirmed that there will not be any issues.

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PHP Upgrade

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PHP is an open-source programming language that WordPress uses to run internal functions and process database information. PHP is a living project, and like WordPress, is constantly being updated and patched for bug and security vulnerabilities. Newer PHP versions fix these vulnerabilities and optimize the processing and delivery of your website content.

Over the next few weeks, we will be conducting a PHP 7.2 upgrade on all customer sites we host. The upgrade to version 7.2 comes with both active and security support from PHP, which will cease to be provided for previous versions.

What does this mean for you, our clients?

PHP 7.2 offers potential performance benefits as well. Some customers have experienced up to 40% faster page speed, as well as greater memory efficiency, upon upgrade. Additionally, PHP 7.2 provides enhanced security via the inclusion of the Argon 2 password hashing function and the introduction of the Libsodium cryptography library.  What’s more? WordPress versions 4.0 and above are actively optimized to use PHP 7 and above, meaning you get almost twice the performance out of your site when running PHP 7.2.

No DNS updates are necessary! Your websites will remain on the same server, with the same IP address and CNAME. Only the PHP version will change. With vital security updates and vastly improved performance features, migrating from older versions of PHP to PHP 7.2 is an easy and important update.

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Get the Facts on Gutenberg: Old vs New WordPress Editor

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In a nutshell, Gutenberg is a brand new editor for the WordPress platform. It will radically change the way you create posts, pages, products, and just about everything else on your site.

Many of you are probably wondering, will Gutenberg be optional? When they roll out Gutenberg officially into WordPress core 5.0 and all the core updates thereafter, you won’t be able to turn it off, as this will become the official editor for your WordPress site.

There is, however, a free plugin called Classic Editor which you can use to restore the old post editor, but use this as a means to an end. 

We also recommend checking out this post we created back in June of 2018 on Gutenberg is Alive which might answer any additional questions you might have.

Apis Productions New LinkedIn Pages 2018

The New LinkedIn Pages

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November 2018: Source: LinkedIn & Social Media Today

LinkedIn has announced a revamp of its company Pages, adding in a range of new enhancements focused on making it easier to generate engagement and participate in relevant conversations from your business Page.

First off, LinkedIn’s now fully integrated Page posting and management functionalities with its mobile app, so admins can maintain their company presence on the go.

LinkedIn Pages Sharing

Up till now, page management via mobile has been problematic, with various limitations in functionality – posting via mobile, for example, has been limited. Now, LinkedIn says, all of these options are accessible, giving you more ways to keep on top of your brand’s LinkedIn performance and engagement.

In addition to this, LinkedIn also says that ‘admins can now associate their Page with hashtags, so they can listen in and respond to conversations happening about their brand or relevant topics on LinkedIn’.

Where that comes in particularly handy is in topic trends – LinkedIn has also added a new ‘Content Suggestions’ listing, which surfaces rising topics and content with your target audience on LinkedIn, based on hashtags.

LinkedIn Changes Nov 2018

By associating your page with the relevant hashtags, you can keep tabs on such conversations, and stay on top of the latest news across the platform, helping you tap into those relevant to your business.

LinkedIn’s also expanded its ways in which Page admins can share content, with the addition of document sharing in updates.

“While admins have always had the ability to post images, native video, and text to their LinkedIn Company Pages, they can now share documents, like PowerPoint presentations, Word Documents and PDFs to tell richer and more compelling brand stories.”

That means you can share your latest white paper, or official announcement PDF, direct on your LinkedIn company page, providing more opportunity to keep your community informed on site.

LinkedIn’s also looking to better facilitate employee advocacy, with new options to both discover and reshare your employees’ public LinkedIn posts from your Page.

New LinkedIn Nov 2018 Changes

How you feel about that will come down to the individual – you might not necessarily want your company to be re-sharing your posts, but the practical benefits make a lot of sense.

LinkedIn’s also adding the ability for Pages to respond to and re-share any posts on LinkedIn where the company’s Page is mentioned, “like customer testimonials and product reviews”. The tools provide expanded ways to help showcase positive conversation, and build more interest, and engagement, with the business.

LinkedIn has created this YouTube video to show you all the newest changes:

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As an added feature, Apis Productions can handle all your social media needs. Visit this page for more info:

Social Media Campaigns

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Landing Page Essentials

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Landing pages typically allow qualified visitors to sign up to receive additional information, download content offers, or redeem other marketing offers. Through their content, landing pages allow you to target a specific audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of visitors into leads.

According to MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook (2nd edition), 44% of clicks for B2B companies are directed to the business’ homepage, not a special landing page. Furthermore, of the B2B companies that are using landing pages, 62% have six or fewer total landing pages.

Landing pages are the heart and soul of an inbound marketer’s lead generation efforts, so why are they still so underutilized? MarketingSherpa cites that the number one reason businesses don’t use landing pages is because their marketing department doesn’t know how to set them up or they are too overloaded. We’ve outlined some key essential components for landing pages below.

  1. A killer headline and compelling subheading(s): the first 3 seconds belong to the headline and this will decide whether your prospects would like to stay on the page or not. Your subheading should be short but offer a few more details to how you can solve a need.
  2. Clear copy: use bullet points to demonstrate clear takeaways and break up large blocks of text, and keep it brief and to-the-point. What will the person get out of your offer? Will they learn how to do something? Become more knowledgeable about a specific topic? How will the information be presented to them?
  3. Solid Design:
  • Color: The psychology of color is real, and it does affect viewer perceptions. Red indicates warnings, blue is serene, etc. While it’s useful for a landing page to match your company colors, it doesn’t have to.
  • Whitespace: Do not cram every inch of your landing page full of text, graphics, or numbers. Leave ‘breathing room’ between items. It makes the page more attractive, and easier to read.
  • Images: A good landing page mixes text and imagery. Too much emphasis on either will go awry, although we’d say if you’re going to err, err on the side of more graphics rather than more text. The right picture is worth 1,000 words.
  • Video: No other element on a landing page will do more to increase conversions than a short video highlighting the benefits of the offer – even if that video is just summarizing the page’s own copy.  Putting a video on a landing page increases conversion by 80%.
  1. A clear, bold Call to Action (CTA): it’s important to understand that your landing page should be focused around one single offer. Make your CTA very clear and feel free to get creative. Instead of a simple “Learn More”, try something more catchy like “Get a Free Assessment” or “Start Saving Time”.
  2. Proof (testimonials, statistics, etc): testimonials serve as a trust raising factor for your prospects. Insert real testimonials to boost the conversion rate. Statistics are easy to reveal and understand if they are clear.
  3. Signup form: as a best practice, only ask for information you need from your leads in order to effectively follow up with and/or qualify them.
  4. Reduce the noise: eliminate headers and navigation and keep the footer links to a minimum (i.e Privacy Policy, Disclosure, etc) – the idea here is to eliminate distractions and keep your potential lead from jumping off the page to something else that catches their eye.
  5. Contact Information: at a minimum an email address, ideally also include a phone number. Try Live Chat for an instant contact tool.
  6. Mobile Friendly: today over 52% of internet users are browsing from smartphones. Having a mobile responsive landing page is absolutely crucial.
  7. Social share buttons: make it easy for users to pass your information to others to the most popular social media channels. Don’t miss out on this simple opportunity to extend the reach of your landing page and the content it offers beyond your direct network and reach.

Still need help? The Apis team is ready to assist!

Website Image Optimization | Apis Productions

Optimizing Images for Websites

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Do the following questions leave you wondering what the best practice is for optimizing images for your website?

  • Why is it that when I do a Google image search, my blog or web images never show up?

  • Do I need to add alt attributes to my images?

  • What’s the difference between JPEG, GIF and PNG? When should I use one over another?

We’ve come up with the answers to those burning questions.

Here’s how to optimize images for the web:

1. Name your images descriptively and in plain language.

2. Optimize your alt attributes carefully.

3. Choose your image dimensions wisely.

4. Reduce the file size of your images.

5. Choose the right file type.

1. Name your images descriptively and in plain language

It’s easy to forget to change the name of your image when you upload it to your site. In WordPress, especially, the default file name is assigned automatically based on what it’s called on your computer or mobile device.

When it comes to image SEO, it’s important to use relevant keywords to help your webpage rank on search engines. Creating descriptive, keyword-rich file names is crucial for image optimization. Search engines not only crawl the text on your webpage, they also crawl your image file names.

Think about how your customers search for products on your website. What naming patterns do they use when they search?

Look at your website analytics to see what keyword patterns your customers follow. Determine the most common naming patterns they use and apply that formula to your image file naming process.

If you’re not going to get that data-driven, just be sure to use relevant, helpful keywords when naming your images (i.e. try to be descriptive).

2. Optimize your alt attributes carefully

Alt attributes are the text alternative to images when a browser can’t properly render them. They’re also used for web accessibility. Even when the image is rendered, if you hover over it, you will see the alt attribute text (depending on your browser settings).

The alt attribute also adds SEO value to your website. Adding appropriate alt attributes that include relevant keywords to the images on your website can help you rank better in the search engines. As a matter of fact, using alt attributes is probably the best way for your images to show up in Google image and web search.

Here’s an example of how to add or edit your alt attributes in WordPress:

Alt Text

Alt Text for WordPress Images

WordPress allows you to add alt text to your images when you upload them using the built-in media uploader. You can also add alt text to an image by visiting Media » Library and then click on the Edit link below the image.

The key here is to add descriptions to your base alt attribute so that potential searchers land on your website. If you do the extra work, Google will reward you with searchers.

3. Choose your image dimensions wisely

A word of caution on providing larger images. You might want to provide larger views for your visitors, which can make for a great user experience, but be careful.

Whatever you do, don’t place the largest image on your webpage and simply shrink the dimensions via the source code. This will increase your page load time because of the larger file size associated with the image.

Instead, make it a smaller image and provide the option to view a larger image in a pop-up or on a separate webpage.

4. Reduce the file size of your images

Consider this:

  • Nearly 50% of consumers won’t even wait 3 seconds for a website to load.

  • Globally, the average page load time is actually increasing.

  • Amazon found that if their pages were to slow down by just one second, they would lose $1.6 billion a year.

  • Google uses page load time as a ranking factor in their algorithm.

So, if you have images that slowly “drool” down the screen and take over 15 seconds to load? Well, you can kiss that prospective customer goodbye!

How large should image files be?

For web images, a good rule of thumb is to try to keep your image file size below 70 kb.

5. Choose the right file type

There are three common file types that are used to post images to the web: JPEG, GIF, and PNG.

There are three universally supported image formats: GIF, PNG, and JPEG. In addition to these formats, some browsers also support newer formats such as WebP and JPEG XR, which offer better overall compression and more features. So, which format should you use?

 

Web Image FormatsImage Source: Google

Do you need animation? If so, GIF is the only universal choice.

GIF limits the color palette to at most 256 colors, which makes it a poor choice for most images. Further, PNG-8 delivers better compression for images with a small palette. As a result, GIF is the right answer only when animation is required.

Do you need to preserve fine detail with the highest resolution? Use PNG.

PNG does not apply any lossy compression algorithms beyond the choice of the size of the color palette. As a result, it will produce the highest quality image, but at a cost of significantly higher filesize than other formats. Use judiciously.

Are you optimizing a photo, screenshot, or a similar image asset? Use JPEG.

JPEG uses a combination of lossy and lossless optimization to reduce filesize of the image asset. Try several JPEG quality levels to find the best quality vs. filesize tradeoff for your asset.

Final Thoughts

If you want to improve the user experience and increase your site visitors, it is very important you optimize your images with these tips in mind. Not only will your site visitors be happier, but you will also dramatically improve SEO which is great for your brand’s visibility and accessibility.

At Apis Productions, we will ensure that your all your pages and media load quickly, keep your site secure and stable, ultimately improving the user experience.

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Steps to Create a YouTube Channel

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Create a new channel

With a Google Account, you can watch and like videos and subscribe to channels. However, without a YouTube channel, you have no public presence on YouTube. Even if you have a Google Account, you need to create a YouTube channel to upload videos, comment, or make playlists. You can use a computer or the YouTube mobile site to create a new channel.

Create a personal channel

Follow these instructions to create a channel that only you can manage using your Google Account. 

  1. Sign in to YouTube on a computer or using the mobile site.
  2. Try any action that requires a channel, such as uploading a video, posting a comment, or creating a playlist.
  3. If you don’t yet have a channel, you’ll see a prompt to create a channel.
  4. Check the details (with your Google Account name and photo) and confirm to create your new channel.

Create a channel with a business or other name

Follow these instructions to create a channel that can have multiple managers or owners. 

You can use a Brand Account to create a channel that has a different name but that’s still managed from your Google Account. Learn more about Brand Accounts.

  1. Sign in to YouTube on a computer or using the mobile site.
  2. Go to your channel list.
  3. Choose to create a new channel or use an existing Brand Account:
    • Create a new channel by clicking Create a new channel.
    • Create a YouTube channel for a Brand Account that you already manage by choosing the Brand Account from the list. If this Brand Account already has a channel, you can’t create a new one—you’ll just be switched over to that channel if you select the Brand Account from the list.
  4. Fill out the details to name your new channel and verify your account. Then, click Done. This creates a new Brand Account.
  5. To add a channel manager, follow the instructions to change channel owners and managers.

Learn more about using a channel with a business or other name on YouTube.

Source: Google

Tags and Keywords for Videos on your Website

The goal with YouTube videos is to provide the most information in the description but don’t stuff it with tags or keywords or you could get flagged and they’ll remove the videos. There is a section to put tags and keywords in within the channel itself for each video but make sure they are relative to the video and not to the company website.

Here’s a great reference about best practices straight from Google:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7002331?hl=en&ref_topic=2803176

The same goes for other cloud video services. If you house your own videos on your server, that’s another discussion altogether.

On another note, we at Apis Productions can produce videos for you. Read more here.

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7 Essential Questions to Create a Website Strategy

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Whether you are starting a brand new website, considering a redesign, or have a shift in your overall business, it’s helpful to take a step back and create a website strategy to serve as a road map. Take the time to consider these seven essential questions that will shed light on how your website should be designed and how to position content. Just like building a house, you wouldn’t just start nailing boards together, right?

1. What are the main objectives you want to achieve?`
Do you want to just keep your current users happy and continue to offer a great rich site with fresh content that keeps them coming back? Or are you more interested in expanding your market – maybe a new segment of potential customers that you want to attract? Or a combination? Identifying this key objective will set the stage for the decisions you make about your website.

2. Who are the primary visitors, and who do you want to attract?
This is key information that needs to be at the heart of your decisions as to what your website experience is and how you position your content.  Here’s an example. One of our clients took a survey of their advisors about their website and upon reviewing the results, identified that the advisors weren’t the ones using their website, the advisors’ staff was. And they are looking for much different information.

3. Where are they going for information?
Review Google Analytics. Know what content is most often viewed as well as the pathways users are taking to get there. Do you have important information that users are not finding? If so, consider re-positioning it on the site.

4. What makes you unique?
What do you differently than your competitors? Do you have a specific niche that sets you apart? That is what you emphasize.

5. What are the competitors doing?
It’s just good business practice to keep tabs on your competitors. Identify key messaging they may be using and be sure to set your company apart in a unique way.

6. What messages are you eager to communicate?
Recognize this can change frequently, but it’s really important to be clear in your message and also identify relevant calls to action. If you are very focused on a particular product or marketing concept, give it the most dominant place visually and be sure to assign a call to action to it – a button to contact you or learn more.

7. What is your plan to create new content and how will you manage it?
Will you manage your content yourself? Do you have staff to manage it for you? Perhaps you will need to outsource your content management? Identify how often and who will take the lead on this important aspect of your website.

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Create 2-3 Shareables for Every Piece of Content you Create

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One of the most key aspects in social media marketing mastery is to get the most out of your content.

Businesses and entrepreneurs have so many things going on at once that it can be easy to forget that it’s not always necessary to continuously send out brand new content to be successful.

The more you can repurpose and make your content feel fresh in a variety of ways the less content you’ll actually have to put out and the more success you’ll have.

Experiment with creating shareable graphics throughout the post that people can use on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. You can also create a series of Instagram Stories to help promote the post. Or you might try creating a short video for Facebook summarizing the post (or even a more in-depth YouTube video!)

Every piece of content you create should have at least 2-3 other pieces of shareable content to accompany it. That way if the link doesn’t resonate then the video might. Or if the video falls short, maybe it makes for good Instagram Stories.

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