Throwback Thursday: Bumblejunk!

10/24/2013 | admin

We work on many projects here at MOS Creative. Do you have too much clutter? Need it removed? Well, we know just the guys who will help you out with that. This week, we want to highlight one of our favorites: Bumblejunk Junk Removal!

We’ve created many things for these guys. Here, we’ve got businesscards, yard signs, postcards, a vehicle wrap, and even an animation that ran on television!

We did all the work in-house, utilizing one of our designers, John as the voice. Tony then animated it all together. This was super fun.

The businesscards were a fun project as well. Here’s the front:

And here’s the back:

We love how well the light blue and the bright, vibrant yellow play off of each other.

While the Bumblejunk guys are out at a house, removing junk as they do, they place a nice sign in the lawn.

Bright, happy, and hard to miss!

The residential postcards were also a treat to make:

As we see in this postcard, there’s a Bumblejunk vehicle driving around. Here’s our vehicle wrap design!

We had a ton of fun creating this. Give Bumblejunk a call today!

-The MOS Creative Team

Check out our blog!

Hashtags: The Searchterm Menace!

10/21/2013 | admin

#I #am #writing #this #blog… #yolo. Hashtags are popping up all over the place. As more and more sites begin to adopt them, they seem to be everywhere. What words come to mind when you think of your business or website? Those words can be utilized as Hashtags and help categorize your site. You can get on tons of lists very quickly this way. Think of them as more specific tags.

Hashtags were first used by IRC chat networks, and popularized by Twitter, and the list of sites using them grow from there. Hashtags have become so popular that they have made it into our real life vernacular. Everyone’s seen the Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake sketch, right?

Hashtags turn topics and phrases into clickable links, allowing people to easily find posts about topics they’re interested in. They are a powerful tool. A powerful tool that is often misused. It’s very easy to over-hashtag useless information. So it’s important to keep your hashtags concise and pertinent to your company.

Luckily, we here at MOS Creative know exactly how and what to hashtag for you!

Here’s 3 quick hashtagging tips for you:

1. Find out what people are looking for.

Find out what the popular tags are. Not just ones that go with what you’re doing but any that might help bring in the right people for your business or website. These will put you in categories with anything else that has been tagged the same so try not to put yourself in

2. Create custom hashtags

Create custom hashtags of your name and/or slogans. Then have people use them. Contests where you have to use a certain hashtag are always good. Or make one that almost anyone can use in a post. This is also a good way to track posts about you.

3. Consider the length of your hashtag

When people retweet your hashtagged tweet, they may want to write a little something about it on their own. If you’ve got a super long hashtag, it’ll definitely push twitter’s 140 character limit.

Keep these in mind when you make your #hashtags. Maybe you can hit us up, we’ll be able to help you with any of your advertising and marketing needs. Visit our website at http://moscreative.com/ and check back here for more fun, tips, contests, and general cool stuff!

-MOS Creative Team

Check out our Tumblr!

PS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57dzaMaouXA

Throwback Thursday – Spring Swing for the Cure!

10/17/2013 | admin

Blast from the past! We would just like to highlight some of the older stuff we’ve done. A project from the past, if you will.

It’s National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so we want to highlight a project that was involved with breast cancer awareness. This week, we want to talk about Spring Swing For The Cure! This was a golf tournament back in 2008, to raise funding for the fight against breast cancer. We got the chance to design their logo, businesscard and do a booklet as well.

Here, we included a breast cancer awareness ribbon as a base, then played with combining green and pink.

With the businesscard, We kept going with the green and pink colors, by including a shot of a golf course’s grass.

The booklet for the event was the best part of this project. We kept the green/pink combo and the close-up of the golf course elements. My favorite part is how the green swoops going up the page seem to be coming from the golfer in the logo’s swing.

Here is a spread of some pages of the book.

This was a fun, productive project that went towards a great cause.

We here at MOS Creative loved this project, and hope to do more just like it.

-The MOS Creative team.

Check out our Tumblr for other fun/cool stuff!

Behind the Scenes: Foodem.com

10/16/2013 | admin

We here at MOS Creative have done many projects, and here’s one of our recent ones, an animation for Foodem.com!

Our animator, Tony, cranked away at this animation. Here are some sketches of the chef character:

None of these made the cut

As you can see, our winning chef was born here! Tony then took this design, and made a full body. Then, the phonemes, or mouth motions had to be made. Here is a sketch sheet of the “happy” phonemes used in the animation:

These were all scanned in and drawn over in Adobe Flash. The animation was then completed with this full motion puppet!

This is just one of the animations we’ve made. We here at MOS Creative are capable of many different styles of animation/film/video and any other motion graphics projects you’d ever want! Remember our slogan: “We help YOU Stand out!” and that we do.

-The MOS Creative Team

check our our other blog, at moscreative.tumblr.com!

Geo Targeting has come to Twitter: What it means for local business

07/19/2013 | admin

Social media giant Twitter has begun offering geo-targeting advertising campaigns, used for mobile advertising based on user location. Businesses are given the ability alert people to in-store events, promotions, and newly available brands through ads on Twitter tailored to the latitude and longitude of each user.

In practical terms, this means that someone walking down the street toward your store front could be pinged on their Twitter feed that you are offering a special, and to mention Twitter to claim it. This way, a storeowner can drive more foot traffic into their location with a very specific message and promotion already in play.

The idea started with zip code targeting, a method that Facebook has been using for years, to help companies pick local audiences for promoting products and services. In time, the geo-targeting feature hopes to pinpoint users down to a latitude and longitude, giving companies more power to draw in specific audiences in close range to their business location(s).

How will this technology better serve you?

Companies: Simple. Highly specific location-based mobile ad targeting is a great way to drive in-store traffic numbers. The ability to reach out to somebody around the corner from your storefront and tell him/her of a discount or new line of product is powerful; imagine interested customers whith an offer in hand they want to utilize.

Potential customers: Imagine as a customer you are walking in your favorite shopping area. You love Godiva Chocolate, but do not usually spring for it. You check your Twitter feed and suddenly are presented with a nice discount or a free piece of chocolate from the Godiva shop four stores down. It’s like taking the in the moment, never know what you’re going to get advertising from someone like Groupon and applying it to you locally. It’s great!

How much of an audience would the ads be reaching?

Just a few statistics for you:

4 billion mobile phones in use worldwide, 1.08 billion of which are smart phones
Current trends show that by 2014, mobile internet usage will be higher than that of desktop internet
With 165 million active users on Twitter, over 50% of them use Twitter Mobile (Microsoft Tag)
46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision
71% of shoppers believe they’ll get a better deal online than in stores. (Nielsen)

With the boom in e-commerce, mobile usage, and growth in people’s reliance on mobile technologies and social media, this new offering from Twitter is perfectly timed.

For both customers and businesses it is a win-win as relationships in digital marketing constantly strive to create more personal connections. Reaching out to someone who is in your neighborhood and browsing their phone is the next step.

If you have any ideas on what you’d do with this, or have any questions for us, please leave us a message below, or give us a call and we’d be more than happy to discuss!

You can visit us at MOSCreative.com.

Check out our guest blog with Infusion Soft: We discuss the power of managed PPC to control budgets and drive leads.

06/26/2013 | admin

We recently had chance to blog on behalf of Infusion Soft, a great provider of inbound marketing management software.

We discussed a PPC campaign we have been working on and how we took a data driven approach to the campaign and were able to reduce their overall cost per acquisition and optimize their campaigns.

Check it out here:

http://bigideasblog.infusionsoft.com/driving-web-traffic/

Video Advertising Comes To Instagram: Our Thoughts.

06/21/2013 | admin

Is Instagram two times better than Twitter? Two and a half times better to be precise. Instagram announced yesterday that they will be entering direct competition with Twitter by releasing their new Video function attached to their popular app. This means users can now record and share 15 second videos with a variety of filters and edit. This is in comparison to Twitter’s six second videos. (15/6=2.5 see what we did there?)

Keep reading and we’ll discuss how this is going to help businesses connect with their followers and build engagement.

The big question of course is how us creatives and businesses are going to use this.

Think about it this way. TV commercials work, they have always worked, and that’s why people keep paying for them. But, they are expensive, and only on one “device”, the TV.

Instagram, and also Vine have opened us up to do free, opt in TV advertising on people’s social channels.

Think about it this way:

Say you are a restaurant and you got a group of people to like you for a free appetizer. Those people are opted in now. They are going to see your posts (most of them). You have been talking about special deals, event nights etcetera. But, they are not biting and you can not figure out why all this social media talk isn’t giving you what you expected.

With this new avenue you can put teaser videos out, fun videos, behind the scenes videos, and straight up advertising videos. This is the kind of content that gets people talking and sharing and frankly, caring about your brand. The numbers are great, they are actually 100% more engaged according to the Adobe Digital Video Benchmark.

Expect to see engagement rates and subsequent conversions soar for brands who take advantage of video advertising and content on Instagram and Vine.

TV is expensive, but we just got our hands on free, opt in video advertising where people are spending their time (Social Media). Let’s not waste this opportunity.

Need a professional video done? Get in touch, we would love to help. Now is a perfect time before this new channel is saturated.

MOSCreative.com

Modern Web Design: Some of our favorites.

06/12/2013 | admin

Web Design is always changing, and what may have been a trendy and engaging site five years ago could be old news. We see this all the time with clients who may have done something very trendy, but now their traffic is down and their bounce rates are up.

Fair or not, a lot of visitors will judge you based on your site’s design, great content or not.

Here are a couple of moderately future proof design ideas that we love, and that your visitors will be impressed enough to stick around for or even share.

Progressive Loading:

This style of website’s goal is simplicity and focus. As a visitor scrolls through the website everything loads up on the same page in a dynamic progression of content. In a marketplace where everyone has short attention spans, it’s not always wise to expect someone to click through 4 pages of your site to read your whole story before doing a sign up form. This method keeps people focused and tells the story your way and naturally flows into your call to action.

Click here for some great single page designs.

Textured Background:

Textured backgrounds are great as a way to add some reality to website, you can make your site seem like something tangible, something more than pixels on a screen. One thing to be aware of is overdoing it though, as too much can be distracting and reduce the focus on your site.

Typography:

For a while there was a trend with sites using safe fonts. You were never quite sure if it would cause issues on your site to use a more interesting font. These days however, it’s gotten much easier and safer to spice things up on your site because there are a lot of new apps and protections to make sure that the site will operate as intended. This has led to a resurgence in interesting, branded fonts on sites.

Sorry! No link this time!

High Res Web:

These days everyone is using high res devices, but, those high res devices can be any number of sizes or dimensions. Users are sensitive to resolution and “crispness” of images like never before. This means for designers that making use of all the modern tools is a must to display crisp graphics in a responsive way.

Click for a great blog on the subject.

Using Pastels:

This follows the current trend of simplifying websites and going for minimalism. The pastel color pallet makes sites seem more simple and friendly. Another benefit is it adds more contrast to the site and gives your visitors happy feelings.

Click for 50 great sites that use Pastel.

Infographics and Social Media:

The most important thing to note about this ongoing trend is its shareability. People love sharing information but with the oversaturation of information people are much less likely to read a couple of pages on a subject. Because of this, we need to give them bite sized and friendly doses of information if we want people to engage.

Thank you for reading! We hope that this helped spark some ideas for your new website or your next website update.

You can leave a comment or question below and we will make sure to get back to you!

Check us out at MOSCreative.com.

Best,

Adwords for Local Businesses: How to use Extensions and the new Google Maps for better conversion rates.

06/05/2013 | admin

Google Adwords has a couple of functions we are highlighting called Local Extensions as well as the new Adwords for Google Maps which are going to be great for local businesses looking to cut through.

As the Google ad says, “Who is looking for a mechanic in your town? Someone Googling for a mechanic in your town.” (Or something to that effect.).

This sets the premise for how Adwords can help a local business. With somewhere between 80% and 90% of searches for products starting online, it’s important for small businesses to be where their customers are looking.

The days of direct mailers, Val-Pak and Yellow Pages advertising are fast fading and local businesses are moving online where their customers are looking for them.

The basics of Adwords are pretty simple, if you are in Columbia, Maryland and someone searches “Columbia Pest Control” in Google an ad of yours will show up with people’s results. One nice thing, unlike most other forms of advertising is that you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad It’s a very measurable form of advertising which only hits people who are looking for you.

With that basic understanding, there are a couple of important functions which can really push traffic and conversions (Sales!) which are worth taking a closer look at.

Local Extensions::

If you take a look at a search in your field you will probably notice a lot of national companies and people you may not have heard of. Your customers will see that too. Now what you can do to set yourself apart is set up something called a local extension. It looks like this:

Local Extensions show searchers where you are.

Basically what it does is for someone who is near you and searching, it will display you businesses contact info to show them that you are local and nearby, therefore letting you cut through some of the noise and get them to call in or come to your location with minimal clicking around and effort.

Google Maps:

An exciting new feature coming to Google maps is that Adwords will soon be able to be displayed on Google Maps.
To clarify, one of the ways people search is that they go to Google Maps and type in “Sushi Restaurant” and see what locations pop up on the map around them.
It would look something like this:

Current Google maps, a bit cluttered, no ads.

Now, the news here is that Google just announced some changes that will take the results from that, to this:

Much cleaner, with prominent Adwords.

As you can see, the new interface is much cleaner with a lot less information. What is visible, most importantly to this post is that Adword ad for Sakura Sushi.

So now when your customers are looking for a Sushi place through their maps, you can once again cut through the noise and get your message in front of them so that you are the place they call to make a reservation, or to come in for a meal.

There are many ways to take advantage of the power of Adwords, these are just a few of our favorites for local business.

If you are a local business trying to get a leg up in your area, give us a call, we’d love to help out. Leave a comment below with any questions or comments and we’ll respond as quickly as possible.

You can check out our website at www.MOSCreative.com.

Joel

Do Grades Matter After College?

03/29/2013 | admin

Discussing if your GPA matters or not when interviewing for jobs is a sensitive subject that receives a lot of (dare I say) heated discussion. In my humble opinion, at the end of the day, your GPA should not hold a great amount of weight when applying for a job or internship, and here’s why:

If an applicant has a 4.0 GPA, that’s great. However, in the world of marketing and public relations, will the GPA still matter if the applicant doesn’t know how to effectively communicate ideas and show that they think outside the box?

While interviewing for various internships throughout the years, I’ve never been asked about my GPA. I’m not trying to advise any readers to slack off now — it’s always important to work hard in school. (Your grades will decide if you graduate or not!) However, if you’re planning on applying to jobs right after college, it would be helpful not to stress too much about your GPA. In other words, your GPA will not be the single deciding factor when applying for jobs.

What will determine it? The ideas you have to offer, and your willingness to pull through with them! Creativity, relevant experience, networking and time management are also important. Speaking skills are also helpful.

Another crucial skill today is writing. With today’s technology that lets us rapidly communicate in short bursts of information, the emphasis to thoroughly express one’s thoughts has deteriorated. I believe employers are looking for the few people who can creatively and effectively communicate ideas through writing.

What else matters besides GPA? Does GPA have more importance than I make it out to be?