Yes, it’s another startup that wants to help businesses manage their presence on Facebook. Social Candy CEO Darin Kotalik admits that the’res no shortage of competition, but he’s hoping to differentiate his company by combining ease-of-use and breadth of features.
The company just announced that it’s expanding those features with by allowing businesses to offer coupons through their Social Candy-created Facebook pages. That’s an obvious way for Social Candy customers to drive traffic from Facebook into their stores — and to track exactly how effective those efforts are. Coupons can be set up in 15 minutes or less, and can automatically updated based on daily specials, Kotalik says.
Social Candy has already been testing the coupon feature, with Gigi’s Cupcakes, and the chain says it led to 83 downloaded coupons, 150 newsletter sign ups, and 244 new Facebook Likes in the first few weeks.
In addition to Gigi’s, Social Candy has other noteworthy customers, especially in the food and wine industry, including Bandit, Sutter Home, and Lambert Bridge wineries (Social Candy is headquartered in California’s wine country, specifically Healdsburg, so it probably has a hometown advantage.) It’s trying to expand into new industries, with customers like the Recording Academy, which gives out the Grammy Awards.
Coupons will be included as a basic feature in Social Candy’s social marketing platform, which it calls the Sweet Shoppe.
Yes, it’s another startup that wants to help businesses manage their presence on Facebook. Social Candy CEO Darin Kotalik admits that the’res no shortage of competition, but he’s hoping to differentiate his company by combining ease-of-use and breadth of features.
The company just announced that it’s expanding those features with by allowing businesses to offer coupons through their Social Candy-created Facebook pages. That’s an obvious way for Social Candy customers to drive traffic from Facebook into their stores — and to track exactly how effective those efforts are. Coupons can be set up in 15 minutes or less, and can automatically updated based on daily specials, Kotalik says.
Social Candy has already been testing the coupon feature, with Gigi’s Cupcakes, and the chain says it led to 83 downloaded coupons, 150 newsletter sign ups, and 244 new Facebook Likes in the first few weeks.
In addition to Gigi’s, Social Candy has other noteworthy customers, especially in the food and wine industry, including Bandit, Sutter Home, and Lambert Bridge wineries (Social Candy is headquartered in California’s wine country, specifically Healdsburg, so it probably has a hometown advantage.) It’s trying to expand into new industries, with customers like the Recording Academy, which gives out the Grammy Awards.
Coupons will be included as a basic feature in Social Candy’s social marketing platform, which it calls the Sweet Shoppe.
This is a guest post by Alex Mathers, founder of Red Lemon Club, a self-taught illustrator and writer who believes that any freelancer passionate about work they are good at deserves to create a successful and thriving career from it. Alex recently released an extremely useful online course titled The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery
Google’s latest addition to the ‘social’ world, in the form of social networking platform Google+, appears to have divided people on how useful and how valuable it actually is. What it has so far shown, is a huge amount of promise and value through its use as a professional networking tool that can be used to expand business and bring professionals together.
Here are 6 ways Google+ can help you attract more and better clients:
1. You can engage with targeted prospects
Thanks to Google+ incorporating the much needed ‘circles’ element to the platform, you are not only able to very clearly define the feeds you see on your home screen depending on what circles you have defined and chosen to be revealed, but you can send out content to specific groups or individuals.
What this does is allow you to target your content so that it is seen by the right people.
On a web platform that could allow anyone and everyone to see all manner of content you post, this is really valuable, and to a professional like yourself, even more so.
2. Sharing more in-depth content
Google+ is brilliant for sharing expanded and varied content. Posts can be essentially any length you like, you can include animations, films, the ability to tag people in posts. Google+ displays pictures really nicely and picture editing is great, giving you plenty of control.
You could even treat Google+ as your own blog, like Kevin Rose, who has swapped his blog for his G+ feed.
3. Gives you the ability to more easily reach out to anyone, including ideal clients
Reaching out and interacting with people is a key element gathering support, exposure, fans, connections, and ultimately paid work for freelancers. Doing this online to complement your engagement in the ‘real world’ can be very powerful if done in the right way.
Google+ lets users connect with potential clients, key influencers and others who support your freelancing business in better and more effective ways.
Firstly, because the platform allows you to follow the updates of people without them requiring to accept a friend request ,as on Facebook, you are in a better position to attract connections by actually interacting with their content and mentioning their name appropriately through ‘+ tagging’ and so on.
Secondly, circles allows you to share specific information with the relevant people, which allows for the sharing of content in a much more focused way. This is very valuable when we are talking about relationship- building.
Thirdly, the highly superior search function within Google+ makes finding people, as well as content to share and engage with, much more easy. The extended circles feature will allow you to share your updates with people you follow who haven’t followed you back yet, bringing further connection-making ability to the system.
4. It provides a more professional, business-like environment
A more professional crowd appears to be being drawn to Google+, mainly for its features and benefits for businesses.
This is where freelancers need to be in order to make the most of being in close proximity to other professionals who can work with them and provide work for them. For the time being, Google+’s user-base is comparatively small (though still huge and growing!), which means being able to stand out more too.
5. Google+ showcases your work and business in greater depth
You have the capability to really turn your profile on Google+ into a place to showcase what you do, be that a visual portfolio, or something in written format, like your CV. 
You can utilise the great picture display and sharing options, such as albums, and images next to your profile picture on your profile page, as well as the ‘About’ area which can contain a great range of material, as well as links, details about where you’ve lived and contact details.
6. You are better able to get found in search
Being linked with Google+ means that everything that is associated with you, including your profile, and brand page, will attract preference from Google’s powerful search engine, so that you, your shared content, and your brand will be found more easily.
The value this presents for self-promotion is very clear. Google is very interested in material that is being shared socially, like it is on Google+, and will make sure that socially-shared content gains priority through their search engine.
Google’s introduction of the +1 button means that anything that receives a +1 (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) will gain more preference through Google search.
Because everything shared in Google+, as well as images now, has a +1 button linked to it, there is a lot of scope for gaining a large amount exposure through this. As Google+ is still in its early stages of development, expect to see a lot of further improvement and added features that will benefit you as a freelancer or small business over time. I’d love to hear what you think of Google+ and what it could offer you as a freelancer in the comments section below.
This is a guest article from Alex Mathers, who has written a well-received e-course designed specifically for freelancers who want to use Google+ to win great projects and clients, called: ‘The Freelancer’s Guide to Winning Incredible Clients through Google+ Mastery’. You can read a free sample chapter from the course here, instantly downloadable.
This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!
6 Ways Google+ Can Win you More Clients
When conducting user research, we all know that asking the right questions is just as important as how you ask them, but how do you know exactly what questions to ask? What if the discussion topic is very personal? How do you get a complete stranger to open up? There is a better way to conduct an in-depth interview, and it doesn’t involve a clipboard. Just imagine what you could discover if the participant’s answers weren’t limited to a predetermined set of questions. This is where collaging can help.
Collaging is a projective technique by which participants select images that represent how they feel about a particular topic. The participants then explain to the moderator the reason they chose each image. The collage becomes an instrument through which participants are able to express needs and feelings that they might not otherwise have been able to articulate. This information enables us to better understand the user’s world and how to design for it.
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
So, you might be asking yourself, “Why should I have people make collages, rather than just ask them point-blank questions about their needs and feelings?” It’s a great question, and the answer is, sometimes the most valuable answer is not in response to a direct question, but one that’s elicited. An image can be a powerful stimulus that evokes a strong response, triggers a memory and draws out feelings that exist below a person’s own level of awareness.
Gerald Zaltman, author of How Customers Think, states that “95% of our thoughts and feelings are unconscious.” There is just so much that we carry around in thought but never share until something triggers it. When we ask a participant a set of pre-defined questions, we are predetermining the scope of the interview. Instead, by presenting a visual stimulus, we are letting the participant start the conversation and bring up topics that are meaningful to them.
There are also times when you don’t know the right question to ask. Sometimes you do, but you don’t know how to ask it. Depending on what you’re researching, participants might have difficulty opening up to you. The research topic might be too personal, controversial or sensitive for the participant to just open up and start discussing with a complete stranger. The collage becomes a catalyst for discussion, an ice-breaker.
What You Can Learn
Collaging is a method of building empathy with your users. You gain an emotional understanding of the user’s feelings, problems, state of mind and so on, which is imperative to know when designing for them. Collaging can also help you better understand the user’s needs, in turn helping you to address them in your product.
The wonderful thing about this method is that participants might reveal stories that prompt a line of questioning about a topic that you never expected to explore (as we’ll see in the examples below). You honestly don’t know what you will learn from each participant’s collage.
A Brief History Of Projective Techniques
Collaging is not new. The method has been well used to conduct qualitative marketing research for at least 40 years. Its use in marketing has mainly been to assess feelings towards brands and products. Other projective techniques — tests such as the Rorschach, word and sentence completion, draw-a-person, and thematic apperception — date back to the early 19th century. All of these methods are rooted in psychology, but their application has expanded to other fields such as advertising, management, sociology, anthropology and, more recently, user experience (UX), to name a few. Collaging as a user research method has yet to be widely adopted in our industry, but I’ve seen a steady increase in its use and popularity over the past few years.
Conducting A Collaging Exercise
Listed below are all the steps necessary to conduct your own collaging study. Let’s walk through them together.
1. Choose Your Topic of Interest
The collaging exercise should focus on a specific topic. You will be asking participants to choose pictures that reflect how they feel about this topic. For example, if I were redesigning a website, I might ask the participant,
“Select pictures that reflect how you would and would not want the new website to greet you.”
You could word this in a lot of different ways, such as,
“Create a story about how you would want the website to communicate with you. What qualities should it have? What qualities should it not have?”
Or, to learn more about a participant’s day-to-day struggle with a problem, you could simply say,
“Select pictures that reflect your experience with using [x].”
2. Create a Collage Board and Get Pictures
You will need a board or a large piece of paper to which the participant can tape their pictures. It doesn’t need to be fancy. In the past, I have just used 11 × 17-inch ledger paper. If I were asking the participant to create two separate collages, I would divide the paper by drawing a line down the middle. I’ve seen other people put a target on a collage board and ask participants to stick pictures on the board according to how closely they “hit home” for them. Feel free to be creative here, and find what works best for you.
Example of a completed collage.
Participants will need to be able to choose from a pool of about 150 to 200 pictures. The pool of pictures must be a mixture of random pictures. They should not have a running theme (i.e. no pictures of just animals or people or medical scenes or nature, etc). The pool should be a good mixture of all sorts of pictures. You can use stock photography or even pictures clipped from magazines. Here are some online sources of free images:
Print the pictures small enough (approximately 3 × 3 inches) for participants to have plenty of room to put as many as they want in their collage. You’ll also want multiple copies of pictures to replace the ones used by participants. In the past, I’ve printed pictures on stickers, which worked well but was a little more expensive.
3. Moderate the Study
- Set up the room.
Lay out all of the pictures on a big long table. Make sure they do not overlap so that the participant can see them all. Put the collage board, some tape and a pen on another table.
- Give the topic and instructions.
Instruct the participant to pick out at least four or five pictures that reflect how they feel about the given topic. Then ask them to tape those pictures to the collage board, and add a caption to each one explaining why they chose it.
- Leave the room.
I prefer to leave the room for five to ten minutes to give the participant time to peruse the pictures without feeling any pressure. When I reenter the room, I tell them to take as long as they need and to let me know when they have completed the collage.
- Discuss the collage.
The collage is finished. Now comes the fun part! Have the participant explain to you why they chose each picture. This is your opportunity to learn as much as you can about how the participant feels about the topic. Let the collage and the participant guide the interview. Be sure to follow up with questions and to probe deeper when needed and appropriate. Keep in mind that the experience can be very personal and revealing for some participants, depending on the sensitivity of the topic. The collage might make it easy for a participant to open a door that they don’t necessarily want to walk through. Be mindful of the participant’s comfort level when probing deeper into something personal.
4. Conduct Analysis
When conducting your analysis, keep in mind that what’s really important is not the pictures they chose, but why they chose them. The analysis and report should focus on what the collage reveals about the participant, not the collage itself. It would be interesting if multiple participants chose the same pictures, but even more interesting if they chose them for the same reasons.
When to Conduct a Collaging Exercise
Consider collaging during the early stages of product development, when user requirements are being gathered. The method is also helpful at any time in the product’s development if you feel the design team is having trouble understanding and identifying with the users. Sometimes designers need to step back and remember exactly who they are designing for.
As mentioned, this method can be most useful if the topic is sensitive, but it’s great for impassive topics, too. Collaging can be used if you just need a fun activity to put the participant at ease and break the ice before a formal interview. For example, I have conducted collaging exercises with cancer patients, with people dealing with chronic pain and even with women about their menstrual cycles and feelings about birth control. On the other hand, I’ve conducted collages to learn more about people’s daily commutes and how they feel about public transportation — much lighter topics.
Collage Examples
The examples below are from collage exercises that I’ve moderated. Each one shows how a picture can change the line of questioning in an interview. The topics, which were discussed because of these images, might never have been brought up in a traditional interview.
Picture from a collage done for research on people suffering from chronic pain.
The participant wrote the caption, “That’s my daughter consoling me when I’m in pain.” When discussing this picture, I was able to probe deeper into how the participant’s pain affects their family and how they deal with it. We were then able to discuss what role family plays in how they manage their pain.
Picture from a collage done for research on how people feel about their commute.
The participant wrote the caption, “Wish my commute was this enjoyable.” I was able to follow up with questions about what their ideal commute to work would be like and what they wished they could change about their current commute.
Picture from a collage done for research on cancer patients.
The participant wrote the caption, “Vomiting!” This led to a line of questioning about the side effects of the participant’s cancer treatments and their coping mechanisms.
Pitfalls To Avoid
Sometimes a stimulus can be too strong and can disrupt a participant’s train of thought and be a distraction. The example below resulted from two participants choosing the same image for the same study:
The participants wrote the captions “Disgusting” and “Gross.” Their captions and their reasons for choosing the image were similar, but in no way did they relate to the topic of interest, which was pain management. The participants couldn’t explain how the image related to what they felt about the topic, but they still chose it because they were drawn to it and it provoked a strong emotion. In this case, we decided to remove the image from the pool because it was obviously a distraction. When conducting a collaging exercise, remove any pictures that you find derail the participants.
Conclusion
Collaging is a great method for learning more about your end users. Depending on when the collaging study is conducted during the product’s development cycle, your findings could do any or all of the following:
- Aid in persona development,
- Be used in early ideation for creating new products,
- Reveal how people feel about the experience of using an existing product,
- Help to define new requirements or enhancements for features.
The method might not be right for every user research initiative, but try it if you feel something is lacking from your traditional interviews. You will be amazed at what you can learn when you throw away the clipboard and let participants direct the interview.
Resources
- How Customers Think: Essential Insights Into the Mind of the Market, Gerald Zaltman
- Customer Intimacy: Pick Your Partners, Shape Your Culture, Win Together, Fred Wiersema
(al) (il)
© Kyle Soucy for Smashing Magazine, 2012.
So in the interest of supporting unique publishing methods and ideas, I thought it might be interesting to talk about Verdant Books and something they’re calling an “interactive novel.” Now my idea of an interactive novel is Choose Your Own Adventure, but this is something fairly unique.
Ok. Here’s the premise:
Hiram and Sibyl Eisenberg have fallen head over heels in love with Leif and Laura Wrightson. Leif and Laura return all the same passion for Sibyl and Hiram, yet all four remain committed to their spouses. What to do? The year is 1971, the place is California, and what never before seemed possible is suddenly irresistible. Camping on the shores of Fallen Lake in the high Sierra, one night they begin a new direction in their lives and those of their children, turning two marriages into one.
Yeah, you read that right. Old Hiram and Sibyl are watching Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s. Hot stuff, right? So here’s where things get really weird. The author, Laird Harrison, is going to update a blog featuring the characters talking about things important to the story. Now, to be clear, I think this is the worst implementation of interactive function I’ve ever seen (especially since all of the “blog posts” (did they have blogs in the 1970s?) are password protected). But here’s what I’m really concerned with.
So it’s going to get easier and easier to publish books. It’s already ridiculously easy, but soon everyone with an idea and dial-up will be able to upload an epub. There will be some good books and some terrible books and there will be varying methods for marketing these books, from the traditional display ad on Amazon to gimmicks like the one above. I do see the value in a sort of “meet-the-author” kind of website where you ask the author questions about his stuff and I do expect publishers to create more and more of this gimmickry in order to sell bits to an audience that is already wildly distracted, but I worry that, like the site that was going to sell soundtracks to books, this is a Bad Idea (TM).
There are ways to change the monetization systems around the distribution of long-form writing. Selling 10,000 word articles about Afganistan for 99 cents a pop is a great model to bring monetary incentive back into reporting and journalism as well as non-fiction writing and editing. We are fast approaching a time when the devices we use to read books will be far more distracting than they even are today. I, for one, always intend to open iBooks or the Kindle reader on my iPad and instead check Twitter and email. It’s a sad, sad day when I long for a standalone, e-ink Kindle over a fully-featured Kindle Fire because I want to read more.
So anything that will pull me out of the book experience is a negative, anything that keeps me reading is a positive. Gimmickry and “viral efforts” work maybe once in a thousand times. Good writing works every time. So let’s hear it for old Hiram and Sibyl and their blog and here’s hoping Harrison sells a few books. But I’d really like to raise a glass to good writing. It will save publishing, even if the publishers thwart it at every turn.
So in the interest of supporting unique publishing methods and ideas, I thought it might be interesting to talk about Verdant Books and something they’re calling an “interactive novel.” Now my idea of an interactive novel is Choose Your Own Adventure, but this is something fairly unique.
Ok. Here’s the premise:
Hiram and Sibyl Eisenberg have fallen head over heels in love with Leif and Laura Wrightson. Leif and Laura return all the same passion for Sibyl and Hiram, yet all four remain committed to their spouses. What to do? The year is 1971, the place is California, and what never before seemed possible is suddenly irresistible. Camping on the shores of Fallen Lake in the high Sierra, one night they begin a new direction in their lives and those of their children, turning two marriages into one.
Yeah, you read that right. Old Hiram and Sibyl are watching Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s. Hot stuff, right? So here’s where things get really weird. The author, Laird Harrison, is going to update a blog featuring the characters talking about things important to the story. Now, to be clear, I think this is the worst implementation of interactive function I’ve ever seen (especially since all of the “blog posts” (did they have blogs in the 1970s?) are password protected). But here’s what I’m really concerned with.
So it’s going to get easier and easier to publish books. It’s already ridiculously easy, but soon everyone with an idea and dial-up will be able to upload an epub. There will be some good books and some terrible books and there will be varying methods for marketing these books, from the traditional display ad on Amazon to gimmicks like the one above. I do see the value in a sort of “meet-the-author” kind of website where you ask the author questions about his stuff and I do expect publishers to create more and more of this gimmickry in order to sell bits to an audience that is already wildly distracted, but I worry that, like the site that was going to sell soundtracks to books, this is a Bad Idea (TM).
There are ways to change the monetization systems around the distribution of long-form writing. Selling 10,000 word articles about Afganistan for 99 cents a pop is a great model to bring monetary incentive back into reporting and journalism as well as non-fiction writing and editing. We are fast approaching a time when the devices we use to read books will be far more distracting than they even are today. I, for one, always intend to open iBooks or the Kindle reader on my iPad and instead check Twitter and email. It’s a sad, sad day when I long for a standalone, e-ink Kindle over a fully-featured Kindle Fire because I want to read more.
So anything that will pull me out of the book experience is a negative, anything that keeps me reading is a positive. Gimmickry and “viral efforts” work maybe once in a thousand times. Good writing works every time. So let’s hear it for old Hiram and Sibyl and their blog and here’s hoping Harrison sells a few books. But I’d really like to raise a glass to good writing. It will save publishing, even if the publishers thwart it at every turn.
It seems these days that many designers automatically settle on the main color in their website’s palette automatically: white. Every other color is just an accent to that. Today, we look at 40 websites that used a bolder color to base their design on — in this case, blue.
It’s harder to pull off a web design that is based on a bold color — the relative safety of a plain old white background is easy to work with. These designers have made it work, though, and this means they can design sites that deliver greater branding benefits using the psychology of color. Check out how they did it.
Critical Zero
Obama 2012
Resume Baking
Foundation Six
Souljade
Yodaa
Carbonmade
The Pixel
Morphix
Vegas Uncork’d
Skype
Twitter Basics
Owltastic
Postbox
Campaign Monitor
Quiip
Elbow Park
Orion Advisor
Bartelme Design
Icebrrg
Birdie
Alex Swanson
Marie Catrib’s
Omaha Barcamp
Kyan
LeaderBe Consulting
Yowza
Ready Made Designs
Knight
Nude Designs
Delibar
Elemodo
Onavo
Jar Design
PSD2HTML
DesignCrowd
nclud
Shelly Cooper
Vimeo
Los Colores Olvidados
Why blue? It’s a bold color but one that’s psychologically fairly neutral and uncontroversial for a business to use — a safe choice. That’s not to say it doesn’t mean anything. Blue is considered a calming color that represents focus, attention, and is both uplifting and motivating. These are all traits that most businesses don’t mind being associated with. While not many businesses will simply say “I need a blue web design” they’ll often request it in their brief or have it as part of their logo. Color psychology does suggest that overuse of blue can come off as sterile and detached, so don’t forget to mix it up a little with other colors that are friendly and pair well.
This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!
40 Websites That Look Great in Blue
It seems these days that many designers automatically settle on the main color in their website’s palette automatically: white. Every other color is just an accent to that. Today, we look at 40 websites that used a bolder color to base their design on — in this case, blue.
It’s harder to pull off a web design that is based on a bold color — the relative safety of a plain old white background is easy to work with. These designers have made it work, though, and this means they can design sites that deliver greater branding benefits using the psychology of color. Check out how they did it.
Critical Zero
Obama 2012
Resume Baking
Foundation Six
Souljade
Yodaa
Carbonmade
The Pixel
Morphix
Vegas Uncork’d
Skype
Twitter Basics
Owltastic
Postbox
Campaign Monitor
Quiip
Elbow Park
Orion Advisor
Bartelme Design
Icebrrg
Birdie
Alex Swanson
Marie Catrib’s
Omaha Barcamp
Kyan
LeaderBe Consulting
Yowza
Ready Made Designs
Knight
Nude Designs
Delibar
Elemodo
Onavo
Jar Design
PSD2HTML
DesignCrowd
nclud
Shelly Cooper
Vimeo
Los Colores Olvidados
Why blue? It’s a bold color but one that’s psychologically fairly neutral and uncontroversial for a business to use — a safe choice. That’s not to say it doesn’t mean anything. Blue is considered a calming color that represents focus, attention, and is both uplifting and motivating. These are all traits that most businesses don’t mind being associated with. While not many businesses will simply say “I need a blue web design” they’ll often request it in their brief or have it as part of their logo. Color psychology does suggest that overuse of blue can come off as sterile and detached, so don’t forget to mix it up a little with other colors that are friendly and pair well.
This is a post from Inspired Magazine. If you like it, you may want to subscribe to our RSS full feed to be updated on every article we’re publishing. Also, it’s highly recommended to follow us on Twitter!
40 Websites That Look Great in Blue
Good Old Games is running a $4.99 sale on multiple Sierra titles including Space Quest and Kings Quest. The games come in packages of three and are compatible with Windows (sorry, Mac users, but here’s a consolation prize).
Each package includes three parts of each series, including Police Quest, Space Quest, and King’s Quest. This includes such hits as the original King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown rendered in beautiful 16-color CGA, a game that literally made my jaw drop when I saw it boot up on my friend’s XT computer in about 1985. That, my friends, was true gaming, before the days of rail shooters and endless RPGs.
Product Page via The Verge
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