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Kudos to my friends and colleagues at Cambridge BioMarketing Group on the launch of their awesome new web presence.
Cambridge BioMarketing is an integrated communications agency serving clients in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, biotech, and life sciences industries.
Check out the Legends of Pharmaceutical Advertising campaign–help bid a fond farewell to hall-of-famers like “The Empty Suit” and the “The Final Tchotchke”…
Google has begun testing a new interface for Adwords. A few MCC users have received invites to experiment with the new UI (not me, unfortunately).
It looks like you can request an invite through the Inside Adwords blog.
Here’s a post from Tim Cohn that offers a brief preview with a screenshot.
At first glance, it looks like they plan to integrate more Google Analytics-like charting features and possibly more robust navigation.
Adwords is due for a UX upgrade. The current approach seems to be collapsing under the weight of all the new features. Some things I’d like to see:
It’s no secret that digital and interactive agencies have been hit by the economic downturn. Even with all the “digital is the future” hype, interactive firms are not insulated from today’s reeling business environment.
Still, many agencies are looking for talent. The market is flooded with talent for the first time in many years and—for the time I can remember—it’s a buyer’s market for agencies, and this creates opportunities for us to build and improve our teams. Jobs are out there.
So how do you land that plum agency job? Unfortunately, skills and experience are simply not enough. Luck and timing also play a big hand. However, you can improve your chances by getting more tactical (and strategic) in your job hunt.
Need ideas? Here are seven helpful tips that might improve your chances…
1. Have Someone Make an Introduction
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. You can vastly improve your chances of being considered if someone connected to the agency makes a recommendation or introduction on your behalf. Look at your network and contacts. Does anyone you know have a contact at the agency? The world of digital agencies is small and surprisingly nepotistic. While a recommendation alone doesn’t mean you’ll get the job, it will often ensure that you get considered.
2. Define (and Sell) your Special Value
What is the real value you can offer our agency? What is the one thing that makes you stand out and is the one facet of your skillset that we can’t live without? Remember, agencies are in the business of selling our people’s capabilities. Of course, your education, background, and prior experiences are all important, but what we’re really looking for is that one special aspect of you that will excite both our clients and internal team.
3. Be Professional, Courteous, and Error-Free
Show up on time. Dress appropriately. Make sure your resume doesn’t have typos. Be respectful. While this may seem like job-hunting 101, you would be surprised at the lack of professionalism and carelessness we see from job applicants. Remember, if you work at a digital agency you will be reflecting the agency (we think about this…a lot). The impression you make goes a long way.
4. Do Your Research
We are always impressed when applicants come in with a solid understanding and knowledge of the agency. Make sure you gather all the data and information you can before the interviews. Look at our website, check out the projects we’ve worked on, and Google the hell out of us. Be prepared with smart questions and tangible perspectives.
5. Check Your Online Brand
If we think you are a potential fit we will Google you. We will look you up on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and we’ll check out your blog if you have one. Make sure you’re online footprint doesn’t contain anything that will scare us away.
6. Follow-up, But Don’t be a Stalker
Proper follow-up is both an art and a science. Feel free to send a nice thank you email or letter, but avoid placing calls or overdoing it. Show us that you’re interested and excited in the position but don’t come across as desperate or scary. Be patient—it may be a week or so until we get back to you.
If you’re interested, RDVO has several positions open…
I recently caught a short but sensible post from TechRadar.com that makes the case that Apple is great at interface design because they are one of few technology companies who value “pleasure” as a design principle.
Great concept and very true – when was the last time you used a device or application (from a company other than Apple) and found the experience actually…ummm…enjoyable?
So what is this user experience pleasure principle? Why do Apple products continue to inspire and dazzle users while products from companies like Microsoft and HP just tend to bore us?
UX designers are conditioned to think that user workflow, task completion and logic are the essentials of a quality experience. Elements like design craftsmanship and detail are often considered extraneous and wasteful—or are simply seen as just “adding color”. Many leading design firms and pundits have trumpeted this concept of simplicity over embellishment—function always trumps form.
It’s becoming clear, however, that interfaces don’t need to be stark and bland to be good. Some of the most interesting and powerful digital experiences can be seen in game UI. And companies like Apple continue to show that creating a sense of wonder in your product experience just may please customers as much as simplified design workflows.
I’ve been reading a number of interesting articles about the imminent death of search engine optimization. Frankly, traditional SEO has been languishing on its death bed for the last several years. While this doesn’t bode well for the folks who have built careers out search optimization, we’re going to see a lot of new opportunities for smart marketers able to marry traditional research with search engine savvy.
I’ll explain.
Google has been moving towards more personalized search services for the last couple of years. Much of this is driven by new principles of the semantic web and the advent of web services and media types that compete with traditional web content for relevancy. Who’s to say, for example, that someone searching for Angelina Jolie will be interested in viewing news more so than her videos or photos?
Google no longer wants to prioritize content for you—they want their users to do it themselves. This approach is now clearly apparent with the promote and remove functionality now showing up on a lot of search results.
Expect to see more of this technology in the coming months. I strongly believe that search personalization will only become more pronounced in future—both user-managed personalization and machine-generated based on your “personalization profile”: personalization based on both your prior activity and the behaviors of users similar to you.
So what does personalized search mean for the traditional SEO? If you deconstruct the process of SEO it breaks down into three parts:
The combination of these elements fundamentally drives search optimization. With personalized search, however, #1 and #3 lose their importance, while #2 because vital. The future of SEO hinges on user research.
User research and profiling has gained importance in user experience design, interactive strategy, and digital marketing. SEOs will also need to become user researchers if they hope to excel. Not only will they need to gain insights into how people search, they need to be able to understand who their users are, how they behave, and what their needs are. This goes way beyond traditional keyword and terminology research—SEOs will need to “get inside the heads” of their users—gaining understanding into demographics, psychographics, and technographics.
The future of SEO may hinge on the ability of marketers to truly understand the makeup of their target customers. This may kill off a good number of the traditional number-crunching SEOs, but the savvy and innovative players will find lucrative opportunities to optimize for the next generation of search experiences.