[Podcast] How to Grow Real Brands with Dava Guthmiller

Discover what it takes to be a “real brand” – one that is bold, honest and centred around emotional connections. Dava Guthmiller, who spearheaded Uber’s branding, is founder and CCO at Noise 13, a branding & design agency in San Francisco.

You will learn how Dava used this philosophy to rapidly scale her agency, including a deep dive into her process of working with Uber and various other lifestyle brands. Dava shares her past failures, with key insights on why execution is just as important as strategy, plus strategies on how to measure branding. Tune in with Dava Guthmiller, Jacob Cass & Matt Davies and discover how to grow real brands with strategy & design.

Listen Here

• Listen on Apple Podcasts 
• Listen on Spotify
• Watch on YouTube
• Listen below

Love the show? Please review us on Apple or Stitcher.

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Show Notes

• Dava Guthmiller’s Website – Noise13
• Dava Guthmiller’s Instagram

Learn Brand Strategy

Brand Master Secrets helps you become a brand strategist and earn specialist fees. And in my opinion, this is the most comprehensive brand strategy course on the market.

The course gave me all the techniques and processes and more importantly… all the systems and tools I needed to build brand strategies for my clients.

This is the consolidated “fast-track” version to becoming a brand strategist.

I wholeheartedly endorse this course for any designer who wants to become a brand strategist and earn specialist fees.

Check out the 15-minute video about the course, which lays out exactly what you get in the Brand Master Secrets.

The post [Podcast] How to Grow Real Brands with Dava Guthmiller first appeared on JUST™ Creative.

How to Create a Content Calendar: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Content With a Small Team

This article has been contributed by Freya Kuka.

Your blog’s survival hinges on quality content – but perhaps just as importantly, ensuring your content is published regularly.

That’s why it’s essential to have a good content calendar that allows you to schedule content production and publication. If you have a team, it will keep them focused and on the ball. An effective content calendar serves as a roadmap to get to where you all want to be.

A calendar allows your team to plan out their daily, weekly and even monthly workflows and know what is expected of them in advance. No employee wants an article with a due date of tomorrow being thrown at them.

A successful content calendar can improve your brand’s content, remote work culture, relationships with employees and general stress levels.

Before we jump into how to create a content calendar, let us take a deep dive into understanding what exactly it means…

What is a Content Calendar?

A content calendar is a bird’s eye view of all of your content publishing plans for the upcoming month (in most cases). It normally includes the platform on which you are going to post the content, the type of content, the due date, partnerships, guidelines and who the piece has been assigned to.

You may add or remove information over time depending on what you believe your team needs, but in general, your calendar is a way to make things easier by getting everybody on the same page.

Image source: blog.hubspot.com

Elements of a Good Content Calendar

Every content calendar is going to be different but good ones always include a few key elements. Instead of jumping right into the swankiest tools and making things way too complicated for your own good – keep it simple.

Platform

You can use a free service like Trello to create your calendar, like the one pictured above, or even just use a simple shared excel sheet via Google Drive. If you want a particular paid tool, that is up to you but get the basics right first.

Keywords

Every article your team is putting time and effort into creating should have a focused keyword you are targeting. This is the keyword you want your audience to find you through and what is most connected with your business. It will also give Google a better understanding of the type of content you are putting out there. There are numerous free keyword research tools you can use to find keywords.

Content Categories

Your blog is bound to have different categories, no matter what industry you’re in. So, for example, if you have a marketing blog you would have categories like:

• Social Media
• SEO
• Content, etc.

For every topic that makes its way to your calendar, you should include the category it fits into. This will help you balance out your content and make sure you have enough content for every category you have included in your blog.

Content

This is a pretty obvious one but nonetheless, it needs to make the list. Your content is the backbone of your calendar and you can use your keywords and categories to plan out what topics your blog needs to be focusing on.

You can then assign topics to authors on your team and create due dates for the content.

Promotion

As you begin to create loads of content, you are going to need to find ways to promote it. These promotional techniques would include everything from sending out a newsletter to updating your social media accounts.

Just as you would plan out the content you are creating, you are also going to need to plan out your promotion strategies. This would include activities such as:

• learning how to create a newsletter within which you will promote your new content
• sharing your new content on social media and webinars
• promoting your content in a podcast episode you are invited to as a guest
• creating new podcast episodes for your company
• building backlinks towards your new content.

I would also suggest including any marketing expenses that might go along with your promotional activity. This could include any podcast equipment you may need, webinar tools you are using, PPC ads your business is investing in, etc. This way you have all of your information in one place.

Obviously you will also have an income and expenses tracker but knowing what you are spending for a certain YouTube video’s creation or a certain blog post will help you decide what is profitable in the long run.

You could also color code these promotional activities to make it easier for you to identify them and keep track of how many of them are coming up.

A Pull File

This is something I do for my own editorial calendar and something I have had freelancers thank me for introducing them to. A pull file is essentially a file full of information that you and your writers will frequently use. It could be images, statistics, certain articles, templates, guidelines, preferred anchors, partnerships – anything.

This file is accessible to everyone and is essentially a way to speed up the content creation process.

Events

Most blogs tend to create content that is specific to a certain festival, season, or national holiday. Keeping track of what is coming up (be it Christmas or the New Year) will allow your team to create topics that are centered around those events in advance.

So, as an owner of a personal finance blog, I would create a piece on ‘Ways to Save During Christmas in 2020’ since Christmas is around the corner. I would also suggest publishing the article at least three months in advance to give Google sufficient time to index it.

Examples of Content Calendars

Creating a content calendar can be overwhelming which is why it is a good idea to take a look at a few examples before you dive in. Looking at the way big brands shape their content schedules, social media posting schedules, and promotion efforts should give you an idea of what you should be doing.

Red Bull

Red Bull is a great brand to look towards if you want to emulate a content strategy. Even though they are known for their energy drink, they should also be known for their content calendar.

They regularly post on social media, update their own blog, and are a great example of an omnichannel approach done right.

According to CoSchedule, here is what their content calendar looks like in a nutshell.

• 11-12 blog posts per day on average
• 9-11 Facebook posts daily
• 7-8 Instagram posts per day

It is important to keep in mind that Redbull’s go-to media platforms (Facebook and Instagram) may be different to your own company’s preferred platforms. For RedBull, most of their target audience is active on those two platforms but for a clothing brand, it would probably be just Instagram. You can use a simple scheduling app to make sure you are regularly posting on the right platform for your business.

Take that into account when you are creating your calendar. Place emphasis on the platforms where your audience is most active.

Whole Foods

Whole Foods is a grocery store that runs a blog wherein they include products in a natural way. They are also pretty active on social media and try to engage with their followers as much as possible. Here are some quick statistics:

• 2 blog posts per week
• 1-2 Instagram posts per day
• 2-3 tweets per day

Since Whole Foods does not publish loads of content on their blog, they tend to share social media posts that include offers they are running, posts on other blogs and schemes that can be found at their stores.

Even though their content calendar is not as busy as some other companies, they have found a way to make it work. Instead of pumping out content just for the sake of it, they produce content that is actually going to aid their brand.

Now that you know what your schedule should look like and what elements your calendar should include, let us talk about how you can go about creating a content calendar.

Step-By-Step Guide to Creating A Content Calendar

I like to divide every new content calendar I create into a five step process which is what I am going to do now. Here is a simplified process you should follow when creating your own-

Step 1: Determine Type of Content

Different companies need to focus on different content and different platforms based on what industry they are in and what audience they are trying to read. You can create an endless variety of content types.

Here are some of the most common type of content produced by brands:

• newsletters
• blog posts
• twitter polls
• social media posts
• infographics
• video content
• product descriptions for your company’s online store
• surveys (you can use a free survey maker like the one from Jotform to create these)
• templates

Step 2. Define Frequency of Publication

Now that you have decided what sort of content you want your team to focus on, you need to figure out how often you are going to be creating the content. This depends on your resources, needs, and audience. Here is a quick example.

• 1 podcast per week
• 2 blog posts per day
• 3 Instagram posts per day
• 1 YouTube video per week
• Create a new tool every year

This is going to give you a few general goals you need to reach as a team and will also aid overall team communication efforts.

Let us use the above example to create a quick content calendar overview using Trello. Since I am in the personal finance niche, I have used that as part of the example.

This is a very bare-bones example of a calendar in the works. It would ideally only be used by a solopreneur or a company owner who has created a general overview of the weekly goals alongside the main calendar.

This is certainly not the end product. A small business or even a large company would normally also work alongside influencers (learn how to find the right Instagram influencers for your business first), be working alongside graphic designers or web developers as well, and also be creating more content.

This would all be reflected in your calendar.

Step 3: Repurpose Your Content

Image source: nonprofitmarketingguide.com

You have created content that can fill up a whole week across different platforms using different mediums such as video, audio, and blog content. Instead of letting your amazing content only bring in one type of audience, consider repurposing your content.

You can use a blog post to create a YouTube video, you can use a podcast episode to create a blog post, you can use articles to create social media posts, etc. There are tons of ways you can use the exact same content on different platforms through different mediums. It will save your team time, money and effort.

It’s important to brief your team on how you plan on repurposing content. A good way to do this is to have a team meeting where everyone can bounce ideas off each other.

Let us say you narrow down on:

• using blog posts to create social media posts
• using your ebook to create new articles
• using podcast episodes to create YouTube videos

You can then update your calendar with these changes and save your team some time.

Step 4: Keep Your Authors in the Loop

Unless you are creating all the content yourself and don’t have a team, you are going to need to keep everyone else in the loop. This means that no matter what tool or software you are using, it needs to be accessible to everyone and understandable by everyone.

It can be something as simple as sharing the Google Sheet you use or adding someone as a team member to a paid/free software like monday.com.

The content calendar that the team from Backlinko uses that is a perfect example of good collaboration.

Image source: backlinko.com

As you can see, keeping a status column of some kind helps everyone understand what stage a certain piece of content is going through at any given moment. A platform like monday.com is great for this since their content calendar template has columns for stuff you probably haven’t even thought of yet.

So, if you want something a little easier on the eyes and a lot easier to handle, this software could be a good bet. If you want to stay simple, just go for Google Sheets. If you are still confused, that brings us to step five.

Step 5: Narrow Down on Platform

Finding the perfect platform for you and your team is going to take some trial and error but here are a few options I would recommend test-driving.

Google Sheets

This is the most common one and with good reason. It is easy to take care of, highly editable and free. Here is what my content calendar on Google Sheets looks like.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule offers a content calendar tool of their own that is used by content marketing agencies like Digital Authority. It offers users the ability to separate content goals based on the size of the goals, the platform, the date and more.

Image source: coschedule.com

The color categorization and easy view of upcoming tasks organized by date makes this option a good one for teams, small or large.

Monday

I have already mentioned monday.com is a good content calendar option before but I am going to mention a few cool features they include in their calendars as well.

• You can integrate tons of apps like Slack or Gmail straight into the content calendar.
• Color categorization makes things easier and more visually appealing.
• Segregating content by day, month and color is an option.
• You can choose to make a board private or shareable.
• Editing the publish date and status of any piece of content is incredibly easy.
• You can add stuff like categories, ratings, links to blog posts, tags and word count.

Changing publish dates on Monday.com content calendar

Changing status of content piece on Monday.com content calendar

Trello

Trello is actually a project management software but it can easily be used as a content calendar as well. The amount of information you want to include is up to you and your team of course. You can include stuff like the name of the author, status of the content, due date, tags and post type.

Step 6: Start Publishing Content

Now that you have everything set up, you can finally start publishing content. Make sure to update your content calendar whenever a piece has been published.

You could also consider giving each author you have hired a content marketing guide. This guide will include the writing style you want to use, marketing goals for your company, tone of voice needed in the content, type of English used (American, British, etc), link building practices, a guide on how to use the calendar, a list of the team members and what each one is in charge of, the entire writing process from start to finish, a general style guide, SEO tips, etc.

Wrapping Up

A content calendar is one of the many tools a modern business is in need of if it wants to keep everyone on the same page. As things get more automated, having the right tools by your side is what can increase profit margins and bring a team together.

This guide should have given you the information you need to get your own calendar up and running. Whether it is an excel sheet or a subscription for CoSchedule that works for you, having one is what’s important.

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About the author: Freya Kuka is the founder of the personal finance blog CollectingCents, which teaches readers how to grow their passive income, save money, improve their credit score and manage debt. She has been featured in publications like Business Insider, Fox Business, the Huffington Post and GoBankingRates. 

The post How to Create a Content Calendar: A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating Content With a Small Team first appeared on JUST™ Creative.

Top 10 Design & Creativity Tools for Designers

This article has been contributed by Denise Langenegger.

As businesses continue to divert their budgets toward content creation and digital marketing, so does the demand for marketing images, infographics, video content, social media marketing, packaging design and website design. In the age of digital marketing, graphic artists and designers have taken center stage.

If you’re working for a brand or client who wants to increase traffic to their pages or profiles, you have to learn how to make your designs stand out. Conversions and sales rely on how a brand’s online presence is put together, so visual elements must be consistent throughout landing pages, email templates and social media.

Despite the growth in demand we’re seeing, there are still plenty of graphic designers out there available to offer their services. From freelance graphic artists to digital marketing agency designers, there will be plenty of options for clients to choose from to get the job done.

So if you are a designer, how do you make your work stand out?

Top 10 Graphic Design & Creativity Tools for Designers

• Animoto: video content creator
• Canva: template-based design suite
• Piktochart: creator of charts and infographics
• Vectr: vector illustration design software
• Assembly: mobile vector illustrator tool
• Place It: template-based mockup creator
• Archetype: intuitive typography tool
• Calligraphr: turn your handwriting into fonts
• Instasize: creative mobile image and video editor
• Made: editor designed for IG Stories

To consistently book graphic design projects, you are going to need a full arsenal of digital editing software and mobile editing apps. This way, you can produce a diversified multimedia portfolio that can be used from one social media platform to another. These are the holy grail tools that will make your life easier when you create effective digital marketing images.

Whether you’re a first-timer or a freelance veteran in graphic design, you’re going to need to know the features and functionality of the following design apps and tools for both mobile phones and desktop setups. Once you try these tools, you can then gauge which ones will be most useful for a particular design campaign or project.

1. Animoto

When it comes to engagement, video content is king. If you are a graphic designer with little to no video editing background, you can rely on Animoto to help you create stunning video content with ease. Anyone – even those with no background in design – can create beautiful video content with just a few clicks with Animoto!

Animoto is a free online video maker that lets you add your own clips to use with premade video templates that are easy to follow using a drag-and-drop editor. To start, you select a storyboard template that best suits the content of your videos. Then you can adjust the colors, fonts, music, transitions and other elements in your video. Once done, you can then upload and share your video! With Animoto, every project is made to impress and meet your client’s business goals.

Animoto lets you create an unlimited number of videos using your own clips plus any resource you may like in their cloud-based stock video and music library.

Who uses Animoto?

Small businesses, realtors, planners, etc. See samples here.

How much does Animoto cost?

The Personal Plan is available for free forever but there will be Animoto branding present in your videos. If you want to remove the Animoto branding and instead use your own logo watermark, you can subscribe to the Professional Plan for only $33/month.

2. Canva

Canva is one of the leading, template-based editing platforms online. Although it has a mobile version, we prefer exploring its rich selection of editing tools from a computer. Quick drag-and-drop adjustments with Canva can help you finish or duplicate a wide range of design projects such as:

• Social media posts
• Event invites
• Marketing images
• Document templates
• Design prints

They also have a version made especially for education, which allows creation and collaboration in the classroom and full access to Canva Pro’s features.

Canva has a mobile app version available for both iOS and Android users, but as mentioned earlier, we find the desktop version much easier to use.

Who uses Canva?

Graphic designers, agencies, small businesses, etc.

How much does Canva cost?

Canva is available for free but you can subscribe to Canva Pro for only $9.95/month per user. Canva Pro lets you access more advanced editing features such as the Background Remover, which comes in handy when you have to make product posts and the like. Normally, you would do this using the Pen Tool in Adobe Photoshop and it could be time-consuming to manually remove backgrounds for multiple photos at a time.

3. Piktochart

Graphic artists must also know how to present numbers from data and other technical information in the most effective way possible. This is a more advanced design skill because it requires you to organize copy and format various design elements into an infographic or picture chart that is easy to read and digest while being visually appealing.

Creating infographics, flow charts and table data from scratch is one of the most time-consuming design jobs ever but you can be a cut above the rest with the help of design platforms like Piktochart.

Piktochart is marketed as an “all-in-one visual communication solution” because it streamlines and automates the process of creating the following:

• Reports
• Infographics
• Charts
• Social media graphics
• PowerPoint slides
• Flyers
• Posters
• Event invites

Who uses Piktochart?

Universities, researchers, restaurants, hospitals and more.

How much does Piktochart cost?

You can use Piktochart for free up to 5 times only. Subscribe to Piktochart Pro for $24/month for unlimited usage, HD image exports, PDF exports and more.

4. Vectr

Vector illustrations are one of the best ways to create digital marketing images because of their format. You can resize vectors as large or as small as you want and the images will not dwindle in quality, unlike normal JPG files that tend to blur or pixelate. A lot of clients prefer vector quality designs – especially for brand logos – because of this.

However, not all graphic designers are well-versed in vector illustration because there is a massive learning curve associated with mastering the art of vector drawing. Moreover, most vector graphics software like Adobe Illustrator come at a very high price. Fortunately, designers can turn to free vector illustrator programs such as Vectr.

Vectr is an online vector graphics software that can create vectors intuitively and seamlessly. It is so easy to use that it can even be shared with collaborators so a team of designers can work on vector graphics together. This online graphics tool has massive potential and every designer will benefit from having this in his or her design arsenal.

You never have to worry about losing clarity with your designs! You can vectorize them online at the Vectr homepage. Just sign up for an account and their vector graphics software will be available for you to use.

Who uses Vectr?

Logo artists, animators and more.

How much does Vectr cost?

Vectr is free!

5. Assembly

You won’t always have access to your computer when the need to create smart and professional graphics arises. This is why we also included a mobile version for vector graphics software in this list.

Download Assembly to be used on your iPhone or iPad to access user-friendly vector design tools that you can use to create professional designs like logos and website banners.

If you are just a casual designer, you can level up your skills with Assembly’s intuitive graphic design tools. From basic vector shapes, pre-made stickers, color or pattern fills, lines and strokes, you have a wide range of top-grade design instruments to work with.

Be ready to capture your ideas whenever inspiration strikes! Play around with touch-optimized editing tools, bezier curves, typography, and full grouping, scaling, rotation and transparency capabilities.

Who uses Assembly?

Graphic designers, illustrators, agencies and more.

How much does Assembly cost?

Assembly can be downloaded for free at the Apple App Store but we recommend subscribing to the Pro version, which ranges from only $2.99/month to $14.99/month. You can choose the features to be included in your plan so you can be sure to get the vector graphic tools that you need to work with for your projects.

6. Place It

Let’s say you’re finished with your design and now you want to see if it will look good on a shirt, a coffee mug, a tote bag, or practically any type of product that needs customized branding. You will need to create product mock-ups and Place It is an online design program built exactly for that.

Place It has a large library of 13,000+ templates to produce high-quality mock-ups for the following products:

• T-shirts
• Hoodies
• Tank Tops
• Tote Bags
• Coffee Mugs
• Tumblers
• Hats
• Product Packaging
• And more

Place It is also quite simple to use. Just drag-and-drop or upload your design and you will be able to select what kind of product you need a mock-up version of. The Smart Templates allow you to adjust elements without breaking their clarity, composition and original look. You can also add layers to your work so you can be as flexible as possible when creating your digital mock-ups.

Who uses Place It?

Retail brands, corporate gift companies, banner makers and more.

How much does Place It cost?

Place It can be used for free but you should subscribe to the Unlimited version for $14.95/month. This version lets you use all of the templates in their vast mockup library plus access to other advanced design features that will help you create work that absolutely stands out from the rest.

7. Archetype

Typography is an essential part of all graphic design. What you say matters just as much as the typeface, spacing and kerning you use to communicate your message. This is why graphic designers must have a firm grasp of the best typefaces to use plus the perfect font pairings for various occasions.

Archetype is an online toolkit app that lets you create beautiful typography quickly and consistently. It eliminates the guesswork by intuitively applying industry-standard best practices when it comes to all things typography.

After you decide on what fonts to use, Archetype also lets you balance out the proportions of the text by recommending the optical horizontal and vertical spacing for your text. This way, your typography will always be neat, easy to notice and read, as well as shareable on various social media platforms.

Who uses Archetype?

Graphic artists, small businesses and more.

How much does Archetype cost?

The app will be tailored to you and will fall into Small, Medium or Large for pricing purposes. You can buy yours outright for $9,000, $17,000 or $31,000 respectively. Alternatively, you can subscribe for a minimum of 12 months for $1,500, $2,000 or $3,800/month respectively, which includes updates.

8. Calligraphr

If your friends have been telling you that your handwriting or calligraphy style is unique and that you should turn it into your own font, you should listen! Calligraphr is an online typography tool that lets you do just that.

To start, you will be asked to fill out a template of the alpha-numeric symbols using your handwriting or calligraphy style. Then you will upload the template into the Calligraphr system, wait a few minutes, and voila! – your very own font will be available for download.

Once you have your own original font, you can then use your handwriting for any design project you might have. Creating your own font is a great way of making packaging design, logo design and more, to stand out from the rest.

Who uses Calligraphr?

Graphic artists, logo artists, comic book artists and more.

How much does Calligraphr cost?

The Free option allows you to create unlimited fonts, but only one at a time with a maximum of 75 characters. The Pro option is $8/month for one month or $4/month for 6+ months, and gives you more characters, data storage, ligature and letter spacing options.

9. Instasize

For a mobile editing app for social media content, Instasize comes packed with a no-nonsense photo editor plus a fun toolkit specifically designed for creative elements.

Let’s start with the image editor on the free and basic account. Just like desktop editors, this pocket-sized app allows you to edit photos on a granular level. A slider control makes it easy for you to achieve the settings you want for:

• Brightness/Sharpness
• Contrast and Saturation
• Exposure and Vibrance
• Temperature and Tint
• Shadows and Highlights
• Grain
• Vignette

If you need to make multiple versions of the same image for various social media platforms, Instasize lets you resize your images according to where you need to upload them to. It has premade template sizes for Instagram (Square and Full Size), IG Stories, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. Why should you resize your images? So your designs won’t get chopped off or hidden unnecessarily if you have the right dimensions each time.

After you’ve played around with the image settings and filters, you can then add border patterns, make collages, and even add stylized text to your images.  Instasize boasts of a wide range of border pattern sets such as Film, Floral, Ink, Glitter, DIY and Vintage. This way, making posters and other branding content is always a breeze.

If you are an iPhone user, you can also edit videos for your Instagram Reels! Like in photos, you can also add creative borders and stylized text to videos with Instasize.

Another awesome feature for iOS users is free access to Unsplash’s stock image library. You can use your images along with hundreds of artistic images from professional photographers and artists.

Who uses Instasize?

Content creators, digital marketers, influencers, small brands and more.

How much does Instasize cost?

Download the app for free on iOS and Android. We recommend subscribing to Premium for $4.99/month so you can get access to over 100+ filters, patterns and text styles that are constantly updated every month.

10. Made

If you’ve been paying attention to online user behavior lately, scrolling a feed the traditional way is starting to be overtaken by the single-tap action of watching Instagram Stories. The rise of vertical content has led to over a billion active viewers every month or about half a million viewers per day.

Having a polished feed is the primary way to capture followers but you also have to start paying attention to your IG Stories strategy. Made is an editing app designed exclusively for IG Stories. Impress people with your IG Story skills by using various premade templates.

To use, you start by choosing a template from a wide variety of design themes. Popular themes include Film, Digital, Tape, Minimalist, Paper and Vintage. Each template comes with a set of different creative layouts that lets you work with multiple images or video clips if you’re using an iPhone.

Who uses Made?

Visual storytellers, content creators, digital marketers, influencers, small brands and more.

How much does Made cost?

You can download Made for free on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store and you’ll be able to access the Classic template set and the Made black and white template set, each with 8 different layouts for Stories. Subscribe to Made Premium for $4.99/month and gain access to more than 100+ templates customized for IG Stories.

Summary

There are plenty of digital marketing design tools available online but using the 10 tools suggested in this article will suffice to get you noticed. The best part is that all of these tools have free and basic versions that you can already use today.

Here is a quick summary of all the top-rated design tools that we just discussed:

• Animoto: video content creator
• Canva: template-based design suite
• Piktochart: creator of charts and infographics
• Vectr: vector illustration design software
• Assembly: mobile vector illustrator tool
• Place It: template-based mockup creator
• Archetype: intuitive typography tool
• Calligraphr: turn your handwriting into fonts
• Instasize: creative mobile image and video editor
• Made: editor designed for IG Stories

Pro Tip: Now that you know the tools that can help you get noticed in the growing and evolving graphic design industry, you should work on building a stunning portfolio to feature all of your hard work. Website builders like Squarespace and Wix are famous options because they have pre-made templates that you can choose from at affordable rates.

Keeping these in mind, you are now ready to book more design jobs and reach your full potential as a graphic designer! Keep exploring the features of the tools mentioned above and you’ll produce high-quality images, video content, logos, websites, and other design work that will stand out every single time.

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About the author: Denise Langenegger is part of the team at Instasize – a content creating tool kit for anyone editing photos and online content on mobile.

The post Top 10 Design & Creativity Tools for Designers first appeared on JUST™ Creative.

Ultimate Guide to Successful Video Pre-Production

This article has been contributed by Torrey Tayenaka.

Before the age of high-speed internet and mobile access to wireless connections, video content was a costly marketing accessory, available only to a small percentage of online users. Now, production technology has advanced and consumers are armed with computers and mobile devices that can view videos anywhere at any time. Accordingly, videos have become a primary medium for business communication and marketing strategies.

• It is expected that by 2022, videos will make up more than 82% of all online traffic.
• Online users spend 88% more time on websites that have videos compared to those that do not.
• 97% of marketers admit that video helps viewers better understand their products or services.
• 81% of businesses today use video as a marketing tool.

Benefits of Producing Videos In-House v. Outsourcing

As the demand for marketing video content increases and videos become more of an integral part of businesses’ overall marketing strategies, you’ll need to plan your brand’s approach to producing video content if you haven’t already.

One of the first things to decide is whether you’ll produce videos in-house, or outsource your video production. There are a number of benefits of building an internal production team to create marketing and internal videos.

Inside Perspective and Insight

Nobody knows your products, services and brand better than the employees who work for your company. They can best project your mission statement, branding elements and business culture to consumers, existing customers and your team.

Producing marketing videos using an in-house production team adds an insider perspective of your business model and products and services.

Convenience

Having an in-house video production team at your disposal allows for a higher volume of content and the ability to put together content at a moment’s notice. Using an outside vendor to produce marketing video content involves scheduling against their other clients and taking the time to travel and set up. With an internal production team, they are ready at all times with the equipment and gear at hand.

Long-Term Cost Savings

Building up an in-house video production team will require initial investment in equipment, supplies and personnel. However, without having to hire a crew for each element of all video productions, the long-term savings will catch up and allow you to see a significant return on the investment and initial expenses.

Step-By-Step Guide to Video Pre-Production Planning

Shooting a video can be an exciting, energizing and even fun activity. However, the work goes into the pre-production phase of the process that will determine the success of the shoot and the final product. Taking the time to plan out each stage and phase of the production process will keep all team members focused and on the same page. Communication is key, and it’s essential to collaborate with the crew each step of the way.

The following are basic guidelines to use during the pre-production planning stage of creating marketing videos.

1. Set Goals and Define Objectives

Setting specific goals and defining objectives for your video provides the project with direction going forward. All other decisions in the pre-production planning process are made with the purpose of the project in mind.

Marketing goals for video content can include conversion points like generating web traffic, amassing newsletter sign-ups or increased sales.

2. Define Target Audience

It’s difficult to create video content without knowing who you’re talking to. Defining your audience helps to establish a voice for your message and focuses your content on providing solutions for those viewers’ common issues or needs.

With digital marketing opportunities that can reach your target audience by chosen demographic markers like age and location, it’s more important than ever to have your intended viewers specifically defined.

3. Define Scope and Length of Project

There is a big difference in preparing for a 90-second talking head customer testimonial and a four-minute company profile with sit-down interviews, b-roll and music. Depending on the type of video you’re producing, the scope and length of the project will vary significantly. Will you use actors? Renting out a shooting location? Use animation effects? These are all aspects that determine your project’s scope and will dictate items like budget and production needs.

4. Create a Project Budget

It’s even more important for internal production teams to know what and how much they can spend on the various aspects of your video creations. Budgets for marketing videos can vary widely depending on video length, production personnel, post-production needs and location rental.

An itemized project budget needs to accurately depict all production expenses to prevent overspending, which can result in production delays or worse.

5. Write, Edit and Revise the Script

Your video script serves as the foundation of the project and guides all other aspects of pre-production planning. Get a draft out to your project manager and other production heads so they can provide input on edits and revisions. The finalized script will be used as a focal reference point throughout the process, so it needs to be as detailed and concise as possible.

6. Create Storyboard

A storyboard visually depicts images of all scenes in the video. It allows the production team to address technical aspects such as location, blocking, lighting and audio concerns. Seeing the video’s content displayed in drawings brings out the production needs for shooting day and post-production efforts. These are simply rough illustrations of each scene and angle to enable the crew to determine production and personnel needs.

7. Shot List

Creating a list of all shots needed on the day or days of shooting advances the schedule in a smoother and collaborative way. Information on a shot-by-shot basis includes a detailed description of the shot, camera placement and dialogue, as well as lighting, sound, props and crew member needs for each scene. Your shot list serves as a valuable reference guide that dictates your shooting schedule and keeps the process moving.

8. Determine Production Personnel Needs

From the shot list, you can determine your production personnel needs on shooting day, from on-camera talent to crews for equipment set up and tear down. Certain shots may require a boom mic operator or lighting assist to help with light bounce and other adjustments.

Consider the need for set transitions and the movement of equipment between shots. In-house video production projects afford the luxury of using existing employees for convenience and budget advantages.

9. Determine Equipment Needs

A second list compiles all of the equipment needs through the shooting of your video. Cross-reference the finalized equipment list with your in-house inventory of production gear to see if any additional items will need to be purchased or rented. This equipment list should include everything from cameras, tripods, lights and microphones to clamps, bounce shades and spare batteries.

Tips for Pre-Production Planning

Advances in technology have made it easier to produce, shoot, edit, and distribute video marketing content. The trick is to avoid sacrificing quality for convenience and cost considerations. A poorly produced online video is less effective and can cause more harm to your brand than having no video at all.

The following tips deal with the most pressing issues in producing in-house video projects using an internal video production department or other employees.

1. Keep It Short

Regular users of social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok have shorter attention spans than ever. They are constantly looking for the next post and won’t stick around for longer videos, regardless of the quality – especially for marketing videos.

The most successful videos on these platforms are short, to the point and deliver their message quickly with high entertainment value.

2. Decide Who is in Charge

Especially with in-house production teams made up of internal employees, who is in charge of the production can vary from project to project depending on the nature of the video and the topics being covered. The bottom line is that someone must take the lead and have the final say.

A project manager oversees the entire production and is responsible for assigning jobs and tasks. The management structure of the production process also varies with each video presenting different needs and challenges.

3. Grab Viewers’ Attention

Video viewer attention spans have never been shorter with the high volume of options for content online. It is critical to capture the audience’s attention within the first few seconds of your marketing videos. The key is to present engaging content that leaves the viewer wanting more and compels them to keep watching.

Focus on why they need the product, service, or message you are delivering. Let viewers know from the start that you are there to provide solutions to their problems or needs.

4. Incorporate Clear Branding Elements

Get creative and have fun with the ways your business and products are presented in your marketing videos while staying true to your brand. Logos, calls to action and other branding elements will keep your videos consistent with those elements that define who you are, what you do, and how you do it. These are the aspects of your business that viewers will connect to your business and remember when making purchasing decisions.

5. Tell a Story

At its most basic level, video production is about telling a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Whether your video is a short explainer video or a longer company overview, the content should tell your story with a through-line that relates to the broadest sections of consumers. A thought line that is followed throughout the video will keep viewers engaged and have them wanting to keep watching until the end.

6. Connect with Your Audience

The best way to get your viewing audience on your side is to be authentic and present your business as an industry leader and trustworthy resource to your customer base. Show your passion and knowledge in a personal way that draws the viewer in and makes them feel like you are speaking directly to them. Offer up solutions to their problems and needs to set you up as the go-to in your field and industry.

7. Distribution Outlets

There is a wide range of online distribution options for your marketing videos, including your own website, social media platforms and other digital assets on the internet. Posting a video on your homepage will automatically improve analytics like conversion and bounce rates. Social media networks offer a range of advertising opportunities and online paid ads can get exposure for your content on popular websites, blogs and apps.

8. Mobile Responsiveness

Wireless technology and the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices allow consumers to view video content anytime and anywhere there is a wireless internet connection. This makes it crucial to cater to marketing videos to mobile viewers. Larger images, captions and clear calls to actions take into consideration that much of your audience views online videos from small screens on their cell phones and tablets.

Planning for Success

Online videos are here to stay and will only increase in viewership and impact as the technology advances and user habits adapt. Video will remain the most effective way to reach target audiences to share your message and showcase the products and services you provide. An internal production team can make sure all the bases are covered and help to ensure you reach the goals and objectives of your digital marketing strategies.

The video marketing landscape is getting more crowded and complicated as more online users rely on the medium for communication and business applications. Creating and implementing a comprehensive pre-production plan well before you hit the record button helps the technical and creative elements run smoothly and efficiently, increasing the chances of producing content that will get viewers’ attention and drive them to your website.

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About the author: Torrey Tayenaka is the co-founder and CEO at Sparkhouse, an Orange County-based video production agency known for transforming video marketing and advertising into real conversations. Torrey is often asked to contribute expertise for publications like Entrepreneur, Single Grain and Forbes.

The post Ultimate Guide to Successful Video Pre-Production first appeared on JUST™ Creative.

12 Best Branding Courses to Learn Online

There is a sweeping ambivalence about what branding truly is and its role, especially among small businesses and startups. It’s easy to dismiss its concept and reduce its idea to logos and color schemes, but what plenty of people don’t know is that its coverage transcends aesthetics and style.

For starters, branding isn’t only how entrepreneurs make their business out to be; it includes everything an enterprise does and all they claim to achieve as an organization — even if it means only one person manages the entire venture. In other words, your brand is the collective perception of your customers and workforce toward your business. It is the look, personality, and principles carried out by your business.

All that said, it’s become even more critical for the modern entrepreneur to aptly and accurately define who they are as a business and what values they stand on. Strong branding doesn’t only set you apart from your competitors, it also helps cement your credibility in the industry, therefore shaping the kind of consumers who support and believe in you.

For this particular article, we’re talking about the top 12 best branding courses across multiple learning resources online.

Let’s get started!

The 12 Most Popular Branding Courses Online

• Personal Branding: Crafting Your Social Media Presence – 2 Week Free Trial then $19/mo.
• The Staples of Branding: From Purpose to Product – 2 Week Free Trial then $19/mo.
• Branding Your Creative Business: Define Your Brand – 2 Week Free Trial then $19/mo.
• Business Branding: The Complete Course Part 1 – Strategy – $129.99
• Business Branding: The Complete Course Part 2 – Expression – $129.99
• Branding & Marketing for Startups: Learn How To Stand Out – $94.99
• Branding: The Creative Journey Specialization – Free
• Brand and Product Management – Free
• Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour – Free
• Branding 101: The Complete Toolkit – $13/mo.
• A Brand Called You – $13/mo.
• How To Develop and Market Your Brand – $13/mo.

See here for our list of the best brand strategy courses and the best logo design courses online.

 

Skillshare

1. Personal Branding: Crafting Your Social Media Presence

When approached with the right strategies, social media can build empires and extend networks. Whereas the idea of becoming an internet personality existed only for entertainers and artists much earlier on its advent, the times have changed in that the digital space now makes personalities out of professionals, too.

Whether you’re a startup founder or a marketing maven, there’s definitely space for your personal voice to shine, as well. With a decade’s worth of experience, internet powerhouse Kate Arends discusses in her course helpful tips and valuable insight on what it means to let social media platforms help improve your individual career.

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2. The Staples of Branding: From Purpose to Product

Product-based ventures pose a lot of stress and joys entrepreneurs who run serviced-based enterprises may not share. Considering how today’s business climate is saturated with a lot of worthy competition, it’s critical that the items you put out add value to your customer’s lives and carry the purpose and reflect ideals.

To make a positive impact, you will want your brand to be known not only for quality output but for the purpose you serve, as well. For his course, streetwear icon, Jeff Staple, talks about how to aptly tell a tale with what you sell, what it takes to come up with a snappy logo, and how to build a brand from the ground up.

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3. Branding Your Creative Business: Define Your Brand

It’s easy to get lost in translation when the word “branding” is thrown around so casually. Both beginning entrepreneurs and seasoned business leaders may find that determining their venture’s actual voice may not be as easy as it sounds. Selling products and services is one thing, but letting one’s business resonate intimately and personally with one’s target market is another.

For this course, sought after brand designer Faye Brown tackles the nitty and gritty of brand definition, what steps leaders may take to understand their business message better, and why defining your business is crucial in communicating with your audience.

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Udemy

4. Business Branding: The Complete Course Part 1 – Strategy

Branding can be complex science to both new and seasoned entrepreneurs. As a result, not too many leaders know how to start, what to do, or what strategies to follow to optimize a more cohesive market presence.

For Part 1 of this course, marketing strategist Steve Hourgahan tackles how to hold your audience’s attention, position your brand effectively to stand out on its own, and a lot more critical aspects of defining what your business is and keeping your customers glued and interested.

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5. Business Branding: The Complete Course Part 2 – Expression

Taking off from where Part 1 ends, Steve Hourgahan extends the conversation to brand psychology, neuroscience, color theory, brand identity design, and more. Perfect for creatives and business leaders looking to elevate their marketing game, this course captures the elemental blocks that comprise branding’s politics.

Enrolees who successfully finish the course can also take home a certificate of completion, making this course suitable for anyone interested in backing up their branding efforts with paperwork.

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6. Branding & Marketing for Startups: Learn How To Stand Out

One of the most important things in branding is identifying your target market and learning to speak their language, and sparking their interests. In his course, Mac Piechota details what to do to stand out among competition to charge more, how typography affects your overall aesthetic, and what to teach your team to better your collective approach to marketing as an organization.

Because Piechota understands that branding is seldom a one-person team, he also articulates what it means to work with other creatives to bring out the best in your business.

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Coursera

7. Branding: The Creative Journey Specialization

More than anything, branding is a creative journey that may take time and a lot of effort to fine-tune correctly. As market trends evolve and consumer needs differ from time to time, it is vital that business people understand what level of relevance their business plays in the market.

For this course, industry leaders Maria Eizaguirre Dieguez, Brian Hallett, Pedro Cifuentes Huertas, and Michael Thompson discuss how to produce meaningful content, what it takes to develop a competent, creative pitch, and how curating a pleasant customer service experience speaks volume about your business values.

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8. Brand and Product Management

Brand strategies can be challenging to develop, especially when you don’t have the right tools and data to guide you. What’s more, people often a misconception that branding is solely about what consumers think a business is about. In reality, branding also covers what your team members think about your business and the culture you foster within your organization.

Marketing professor, Luis Rodriguez Baptista, tackles in his course how to establish a clear blueprint of your branding principles to help actualize the brand you deem your enterprise to possess.

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9. Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand and Behaviour

While branding is largely about how you make your business out to be, it isn’t any less about customer experience, too. The encounters you cultivate for both your consumers and your team members are just as integral in creating a familiar brand that people can trust and support.

For his course, business leader Nader Tavassoli discusses how you can foster desirable engagements with clients while maintaining healthy boundaries, what branding means in today’s context, and what others can do to help support affected brands.

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Creative Live

10. Branding 101: The Complete Toolkit

For a brand to thrive, leaders must put out a strong business message, functional aesthetics, a cohesive customer experience strategy, and core values that gravitate toward empathy, honesty, and a commitment to extending nothing less than quality products and services.

In-demand marketing creative, Danielle McWaters, talks about the nitty and gritty entrepreneurs can expect in their expeditions to building an authentic brand people appreciate and believe in. As the course name implies, expect to cover everything a young business leader may need to learn about in the name of branding.

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11. A Brand Called You

In developing a brand you can only hope people will love and support; it’s easy to forget that your personal charisma and energy play a huge factor in your overall business identity.

For her course, design and brand icon, Debbie Millman, tackles how to improve the way you relate with others, what communication tactics best work in your favor, and how vital it is to understand your own personal brand before you can build the image of an enterprise.

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12. How To Develop and Market Your Brand

Entrepreneurs who often fail to appreciate the power of strong brand positioning often don’t understand that a reliable business identity can be determinative of sales, too. The more highly customers think of your products, the more likely they’ll keep on supporting it.

Film and photography artist Sandra Coan discusses in her course what it takes to build a brand, what it means to connect to audiences, and why braving calculated uncertainty to meet clients where they are is the best way to strengthen relationships and keep abreast evolving marketing trends.

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The Top 12 Best Branding Online Courses

All in all, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to branding, and finding your business’ voice and banking on it to reach your market can be a challenging thing to do. With so much noise in consumerism today, it can be difficult to breeze through business and succeed the way household corporations do. But with the right tools and resources, picking up what works for your business and building a community and culture that highlights what your enterprise is about shouldn’t seem like an impossible task.

If you’re determined to improve your branding efforts, you’re bound to find an online course on this list that speaks directly to you.

The post 12 Best Branding Courses to Learn Online first appeared on JUST™ Creative.