Jennifer Daniel and her team developed a philosophy they termed the “Bart and Lisa approach” to designing infographics. “You create something that Bart Simpson would really like,” she explains—a graphic that will appeal to someone with a low-attention span, or a reader who will appreciate the big picture without getting into the granular details. At the same time, the illustration should work on a Lisa Simpson-level; it should be equally as engaging for those who spend a ton of time poring over the page—absorbing the details, appreciating the context—and who walk away having learned something new.
Source: The “Bart And Lisa” Theory Of Information Design | Co.Design
From Amazon to Yahoo, we rank tech brands for diversity of employees by race and gender…(click image above or link below for interactive infographic)
Source: Diversity in Tech | Information is Beautiful
Contextual marketing is personalized marketing that enhances the customer’s experience based on a customer’s real-time behavior.
The chart above shows different marketing approaches before and after context is implemented.
One thing you’ll notice is the shift in what metrics are valued at each approach.
Today’s customer will remember an experience with your brand before they remember your brand message. It’s best to focus on creating experiences instead of simply targeting customers.
Source: Why Contextual Marketing Is Important To Your Business | DBI
With the way social media has evolved over the last 7 years, telling a story that connects with your target audience on a personal level is what will help you stand out from your competitors. Park suggests (and I agree) that using visuals to share you story will increase engagement dramatically. Park says to start with a visual that tells the story, and bring it full circle with a call to action at the end.
Source: The Art of Storytelling By a Storyteller
Practically every digital marketing budget in 2016 includes line items for both SEO and content marketing… the inclusion of influencer marketing is a must. The right influencers will enhance brand discoverability and audience development, boosting reach, results and ROI.
Source: 6 Reasons to Boost SEO & Content with Influencer Marketing
The graph represents a network of 448 Twitter users whose recent tweets contained “databythebay”, or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets, taken from a data set limited to a maximum of 18,000 tweets. The network was obtained from Twitter on Wednesday, 18 May 2016 at 18:18 UTC.
User Experience is an increasingly expansive discipline but the key concepts remain largely the same. These are some of the main things that contribute to the UX of your site and the things you need to consider when implementing a UX strategy.
(follow the link below to read each of these principles explained)
Source: The Fundamental Concepts of Good UX | Usabilla Blog
Check out these seven steps to better utilize digital tools to innovate in your company.
Source: 7 Ways Managers Can Strategize More Effectively in the Digital Age (Infographic)
The Atlas of Emotion is a tool to help people better understand what emotions are, how they are triggered and what their effects are, and how to become aware of emotions before acting on them. Read More
Those who arrive at a long-form article by following a link from another page within the same website – such as a homepage or a suggested link from another article – result in the greatest amount of time spent with the article, an average of 148 seconds.
An open-source exploration of the city’s neighborhoods, nightlife, airport traffic, and more, through the lens of publicly available taxi and Uber data.Images are clickable to open hi-res versions.
Source: 1.1 Billion NYC Taxi and Uber Trips analyzed and visualized | DataViz
Turning raw data into actionable insights has been the goal of many a business since the 1990s. Back then, ‘business intelligence’ was the buzzword, and since the tweenies and teenies it’s been ‘big data’. Now the two are combining (‘Big Intelligence’, maybe?) as the promise of big data is finally capable of delivering the business intelligence that companies have long dreamed about. Read More
Rapid growth in the “Internet of Things” space means two things. First, it means that everything we own will soon be Internet-connected. Second, it means that hackers will soon have access to everything we own, by virtue of it all being Internet-connected.
+Commentary: This is the sort of Listicle where ZDnet does its best to be Buzzfeed for nerds & hackers. Or your friendly neighborhood IT Director probably really is worried about this line of inquiry, but I’m not so sure that the 87% who don’t even understand IoT, let alone adopt it, even do. So let’s talk about what they won’t, shall we?
When creating a mobile website you think of typography and decide not to experiment with font colors and types. You carefully select content that would engage and entertain. You even predict your vis…
(for most that title will be too wonky. Below is the article that inspired it followed by commentary about how you too can benefit from scrutinizing your “network” of assocations and might even win your own David vs Goliath story)
Researchers at the University of Southern California recently uncovered the majority illusion, a paradox within social networks that makes some ideas, behaviors, or attributes appear widespread even when they are not. Since we can’t keep an eye on what the entire world is up to, we’re limited to witnessing what our social network says and does. At times, well-connected members within our network can skew our perception of how common an idea or behavior actually is.
State of Connectivity 2015: A Report on Global Internet Access, the second annual study by Facebook, takes a close look at the current state of global internet connectivity
Source: State of Connectivity 2015: A Report on Global Internet Access | Facebook
The question almost never comes up anymore: why optimize performance? It’s rarely asked because there’s an abundance of data proving that optimization has an impact on crucial metrics like conversion rate and engagement. […read the rest at the link below]
Fresh on the heels of Valentine’s Day, and returning to work the next morning seemed a good time to take stock of how your marketing or branding efforts pay off. Where it matters, in the hearts and minds of your customers. In your office right now maybe you or someone still has that thoughtful bouquet that their loved one sent them, fading as it were, from sitting there all weekend.
That is how you should view your efforts, what is their shelf-life, and how does it play out over all the touch-points and life-cycle of a typical consumer. This sounds like heady stuff, but it some of the most basic psychology. 
Summary: A good friendship or romantic partnership takes work. The same goes for customer relationships. Today’s consumers are looking for brands with experiences that feel personalized and effortless and will last long beyond the transaction. Great customer service keeps your customer relationships strong. And it can keep the love (of your brand) alive.
The Diversity Baseline Survey includes feedback from 34 publishers and 8 review journals.
Source: Most Book Publishing Professionals Are Straight White Women | GalleyCat
Today, you’d be lucky to find a cheap knockoff in a world dominated by crappy promotional infographics churned out for viral attention. Nicholas Felton, the data viz guru who once designed Facebook’s Timeline, now builds apps. Jer Thorp is as interested in reverse-engineering algorithms and data art as he is in producing pure data visualization. Even the infographics on the portfolio-sharing site Behance are on the downswing. “Infographic posting generally rose steadily from 2007 to 2012, where it peaked, and has begun to decline since then,” Sarah Rapp, Head of Behance Community Data & Insights, Adobe
Source: What Killed The Infographic? | Co.Design
Source: What is Hadoop? Great Infographics Explains How it Works | DataViz
Willard Cope Brinton is credited as one of the pioneers of information visualization, and I just found out his 1939 book Graphic Presentation is available in its entirety at the Internet Archive. You can download it in various formats. The book was an update to his previous book from 25 years prior, Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. It’s also at the Archive.
Source: Classic 1939 book on graphs in its entirety | FlowingData
+Commentary: This is a highly informative infographic with much wisdom highlighted, it is like an Emily Post Social [Media] Etiquette Guide for commenting that does not go far enough to address all situations. It is a basic how-to, and a starting point. The follow up on the blog page (click the image above to read) as it gives you three solid reasons why negative comments can be good for your business.
Comparison chart of 3 most popular Content Management systems: WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Get to know all the pros and cons of each platform.
Source: CMS comparison – WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal |WebsiteSetup.org
Six in ten of us are visual learners: people who learn best when information is delivered through the eyes; by looking at images or videos, or reading. That’s just one of the reasons why visual content is so important in today’s content marketing world. Another is its shareability and engagement power. In 2013, social media analytics company Socialbakers reported that 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook were images, up from 85% in 2012. Only 3% of the most engaging posts in 2013 were regular status updates.
There’s no question that marketers today understand the power of visual content. In its State of Content Marketing 2014 report, Oracle Eloqua found that 58% of respondents list making content more visual and engaging as a trend influencing their strategy for the year. But constantly churning out visual content presents a challenge: you need to find meaningful data to fuel that content and, more importantly, you need to find stories within that data that tie into your brand’s values and strategic goals.
The good news is, the inspiration for your next visual project is probably hiding right under your nose. Here are six easy ways to find your next standout piece: Read More at Visual.ly
© 2014, VerticalResponse Blog
Social media is playing a critical role in how small businesses are conducting business today. This infographic shares the factors and results:
Source: Small Business Survey Reveals Social Media Trends | VR Marketing Blog
![UX Vision Design Process Infographic [Research, Insight, Concept, Design]](https://gleamsocialblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ux_design.png?w=1000)
image via Head Space Design
Source: UX Design – a real thing or just a pretentious buzzword? | Headspace Design
In the following infographic, originally published by FreeWebsite.com, discover some very valuable tips on building your brand online. They include tips like “custom tailoring your message,” “standing out in the marketplace,” “utilizing social media,” and so much more. It’s not going to be a walk in the park but it is certainly obtainable and should be the goal of any small business.
Source: How To Effectively Build Your Brand Online [Infographic] | Search Engine Journal
Content 4.0 is here.That’s content worth paying for — and consumers are buying lots of it.For the preceding decade, content has been available for free online, both legally and illegally. So why are people buying it now?
Because technology is making content more convenient, attractive, relevant and emotional. From iTunes to Amazon, from Netflix to the New York Times, the signs of Content 4.0 are everywhere.
Source: INFOGRAPHIC: Content 4.0 | Business Insider
+Commentary: Is this a thing? Did we jump fro 2.0 to 4.0 when no one was looking? We’ll have to remain vigilant to see if this actually pans out or is a marketing ploy to sell tickets to their IGNITION conference. Technologists love to tell you how bright & sunny things will be in the future, don’t they?
This is a very lovely infographic though. Nice Packaging for snake-oil.
Recent research confirms that we are living in the digital information age. From Alaska to Florida, nearly 
half of all Americans get some form of local news on a mobile device, and 46 percent of people get their news online at least three times a week. What’s more, online news sources officially surpassed print newspapers in ad revenue in 2010. Thanks to online news, we’re getting more breaking news than ever. And thanks to social media, we’re getting news as it happens—sometimes even before news organizations have a chance to report it.Are more people turning to social media for breaking news? And can we trust the news that social media delivers to be accurate and factual? Check out this infographic to learn more about the changing face of news delivery and how social media may end up leading the charge.
Source: INFOGRAPHIC: Social Media: The New News Source | Schools.com
The phrase “service economy” — commonly used to describe the U.S. economic profile these days — refers to a decrease in manufacturing (where we make things for people) and an increase in the service sector (where we do stuff for people). Read More
Four in Hand / Half Windsor / Windsor / Shell Knot
There’s something very strange about the anonymity of the Web that brings out the worst in some people. I don’t get it, but it’s something we have to deal with for now. Courtney S… Read More
GLEAMsocial 