APP OF THE MONTH: QR Code Generator

Posted Leave a commentPosted in App of the Month, Branding, Marketing
Name QR Code Generator
Product Description Easy to make QR codes for your business, available for loads of different purposes so your clients can easily access whatever information you choose!
Availability Available on the QR Code Generator Website
Key Features ·       Link your customers to URLs, vCards, Plain Text, Email, SMS, WiFi, Social Media Accounts, Images, Playlists, Bitcoin and more with one easily scannable QR Code.

·       Integrate your logo into your QR codes and pick from designs that will best match your company branding.

·       Basic insights included so you can see how many people have scanned your QR Code!

·       Simple to use software makes it easy to create QR codes for your business regardless of your technical ability.

·       Loads of online resources are available to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing, and that you are using your QR Codes efficiently and effectively.

Prices and Plans For basic QR Code generating this app is absolutely free! Advanced Tools including detailed insights, more colour and design options and organised online storage can be accessed from £5 per month.
Biggest Pro It’s so straightforward! This aptly named App is so easy to use and does exactly what it says on the tin.
Biggest Con Once you have made your QR Code, it cannot be edited with a free account. Not a big flaw, you just have to check your QR Code before you whack it all over your branding to make sure it takes you to the right place.

 

Not sure what a QR Code is? It’s almost like the evolution of the Barcode. And you can learn more by visiting the QR Code Generator Website: What is a QR Code?

Target Audience: The Generations and How to Target Them

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Branding, Marketing, Start Ups

Baby Boomers

Born 1946-1964

This revolutionary generation lived through the evolution of the teenager and the invention of Rock and Roll.  They are brand loyal to the last and all about research. So prove yourself with great customer service, selective upselling, tactical advertising that personalised to them and offer them rewards for their service. They spend roughly 1 hour on social media a day, love Facebook over other platforms and are way more likely to share content! But beware, they will also unfollow brands they think are too spammy and are wary of online sales so ensure you have a flawless checkout in place.

TEXT FROM INFOGRAPHIC

Time Spent on Social Media: 1hr per day

Preferred Platforms: Email, Facebook

Customer Behaviour: Brand Loyal, Love Research, Wary of Spam;

How to Target: Great Customer Service, Selective Upselling, Tactical Personalised Advertising, Sharable Content, Flawless Checkout Process, Don’t Spam.

 

Generation X

Born 1965-1980

Growing up in a time of shifting society and rise in industry this generation is more likely to hold business leadership positions or be entrepreneurs. They spend up to 2 hours a day on social media and use the internet and customer reviews before they purchase products or services, so ensure you provide lots of information about your brand. They also love Facebook but around half the generation can also be found on Instagram. They love value for money so consider providing them with coupons or vouchers. Like the generation before them they also have concerns about privacy, so make that checkout process lock tight!

TEXT FROM INFOGRAPHIC

Time Spent on Social Media: 2hrs per day

Preferred Platforms: Email, Facebook & Instagram

Customer Behaviour: Love Research, Word of Mouth and Reviews, Value for Money, Concerned About Privacy.

How to Target: Detailed Brand Info, Space for Customer Reviews, Offer Coupons or Vouchers, Flawless Checkout Process.

 

Millennials | Generation Y

Born 1981-1996

The first digital natives alive, they have seen Nintendo consoles starting with the NES, through the Wii and to the Switch, meaning they are much more likely to buy products online than their predecessors. But beware, they aren’t as susceptible to traditional forms of advertising. They are entering their prime earning years and want to build an online relationship with the brands they love, following them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. So be innovative and keep up with trends, gather those reviews and offer incentives. By building online relationships you can offer rewards for loyalty and interaction, if you can turn it into an app, even better. Finally, they love audio content, so get podcasting, either with your own or through sponsorship and advertising.

TEXT FROM INFOGRAPHIC

Time Spent on Social Media: 2.5 hrs per day

Preferred Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube

Customer Behaviour: Digital Natives, Want Online Brand Relationships, Prime Earning Age, Don’t like Traditional Adverts, Love Audio Content.

How to Target: Be Innovative, Follow Trends, Offer Incentives, Loyalty Programmes, Target Podcasts.

 

Generation Z

Born 1997-2012

Fully-fledged technical wizards who have grown up around an ever-growing tech industry.  Spending almost 3 hours a day on social media they prefer YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok and love experimenting with new platforms, so an omnichannel approach with interactive content will be your best bet for capturing this market. They have short attention spans but are excellent multitaskers and care deeply about social and environmental causes. They love a brand story and the ability to contribute content and interact with their favourites. They’re brand loyal but will jump ship if a company is unethical. They love an influencer, but wordy ads can put them off so get straight to the point!

TEXT FROM INFOGRAPHIC

Time Spent on Social Media: 3 hrs per day

Preferred Platform: YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Experimentation

Customer Behaviour: Short Attention Span, Great Multitaskers, Brand Loyal, Cause Conscious, Love Interactive Content.

How to Target: Multi-Platform Approach, AR/VR Content, Brand Story, Interactivity with Audience, Include Relevant Influencers, Stay Ethical, Be Short and Snappy.

 

Generation Alpha

Born 2013-present

The Offspring of the Millennials, born with iPads in their hands. It is predicted that they will live on a planet with an overabundance of people, the population set to be 9 billion by 2030. There will be the highest ever cohort of over 60s meaning that Generation Alpha will have to take the strain of an older population. Who knows what’s going to come from this generation? But it’s worth watching this space!

TEXT FROM INFOGRAPHIC

Offspring of Millennials. Predicted to live on a planet with a population of 9 billion by 2030 and the highest ever cohort of over 60s ever seen.

Who knows what’s going to come from this Generation?

But it’s worth watching this space!

 

Have you got any techniques or tricks you use to target different generations? Let us know in the comments!

The Psychology of Colour

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Branding, Digital Marketing, Marketing

We all know it’s incredibly difficult to stand out online and colour can play an incredible part in helping us emerge from the crowd.

Colours can be used to invoke diverse emotions and feelings so it is very important to consider exactly what our content and branding is projecting to our audience.

The Arts Business has created a Colour Wheel and table to give you an idea of the different kind of information that is conative with different colours.

 

YELLOW

·      Creative

·      Joyful

·      Energy

·      Fresh

·      Youthfulness

ORANGE

·      Confidence

·      Success

·      Bravery

·      Friendly

·      Cheerful

·      Warmth

RED

·      Passion

·      Power

·      Urgency

·      Love

·      Heat

PINK

·      Flamboyant

·      Fun

·      Sexuality

·      Caring

·      Feminine

·      Emotional

PURPLE

·      Luxury

·      Wisdom

·      Ambitious

BLACK

·      Exclusivity

·      Bold

·      Stability

BLUE

·      Faith

·      Calm

·      Loyal

·      Intelligent

GREY

·      High-Tech

·      Security

GREEN

·      Money

·      Growth

·      Health

·      Eco

·      Natural

·      Safe

 

Different shades of these colours can also suggest different things for example lighter, pastel colours are seen as calming and serene whereas bright, more vibrant colours induce energy and enthusiasm.

When thinking about the branding of your arts business you will also want to consider any important call to action buttons or clickbait, ensuring they are in a contrasting colour to the rest of your website so it stands out to your consumers.

And there you have it, well, sort of. Obviously, there’s a load of psychological reasoning behind why we feel certain ways or associate things with different colours and should you choose to google it you can spend hours in the rabbit hole of why!

But the important thing is to recognise the significance of colours to use them effectively through the branding of your arts business!

 

What colours do you use for your branding and why? Let us know in the comments!

To learn more about branding you should check out our post on how to create a Brand Book for your arts business.

APP OF THE MONTH: Grammarly

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Administration, App of the Month, Branding
Name Grammarly
Product Description Proofread from home with ease and improve your content to make your writing clear and effective!
Availability Available on Chrome, macOS, Microsoft Word and your phone. Learn More in the Grammarly app store.
Key Features ·       Make sure your writing is accurate, clear and concise with Grammarly’s AI writing assistant.

·       Pick a theme to easily convey the tone and brand voice of your business.

·       Link Grammarly with all your favourite sites including Gmail, Outlook, Messenger, Google Docs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

·       Adapt the settings of Grammarly specifically for your business, for example, changing automatically changing ‘the arts business’ to The Arts Business.

·       Share your account with up to 50 people across your company safely and easily.

Prices and Plans Free! For all of your correction and proofreading needs! Grammarly Premium is available from $12.50 per month.
Biggest Pro It’s great at picking up all your grammatical errors and spelling mistakes that MS Word doesn’t always pick up on.
Biggest Con The adverts for its premium services, but they are easy to put up with when you’re getting this awesome service for free!

We all know when you have to proofread alone it can get tiring and it’s easy to miss things so just run it through Grammarly and you’ll catch all those sneaky typos.

7 Ways to make your Website Accessible

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Administration, Branding, Websites

A great way to reach more people with your arts business is to ensure it is accessible to everyone, regardless of ability and the best way to start is by making sure your website is disability friendly.

The most common types of impairments that you need to think about in your website design are:

  • Visual Impairment: anyone who is blind, has low vision, requires corrective eyewear or is colour-blind.
  • Physical Impairment: anyone who has restricted movement caused by a disability or struggles with certain motor skills like moving a mouse or typing on a keyboard.
  • Hearing Impairment: anyone who is deaf or hard of hearing.
  • Psychiatric Disability: something you need to be aware of should you have content which may be triggering to someone with mental illness.
  • Photosensitivity: users with epilepsy who could have seizures induced from flashing lights.
  • Cognitive Impairment: a disability which affects someone’s cognitive functions like dyslexia, dysnomia or dementia.

With that in mind here are The Arts Business’ top tips for making your website accessible

  1. Image Tags Alt text

You should be doing this already to improve your SEO but for accessibility purposes you basically want to give a detailed description on what can be seen in the images on your website.

For example, if this is the image you’re using:

Then a good alt tag would be ‘ballet dancer in a forest’. An even better one might read ‘Ballet dancer in black leotard and tutu, standing on one foot en pointe in a forest in the sunshine’. Whatever you do, don’t leave your alt text blank.

  1. Colour Scheme

There are a few things to consider here.

Firstly, think about your company’s branding, try to use distinctive colours. Think about shades of colour, for example, if you use indigo and lilac in your companies branding ensure the colours are not two similar shades of purple as this could make your content difficult to decipher.

Next, you must think about a potential user who is colour blind. We’ve all seen the colour-blindness tests, right?

Think about the colours you’re using together and if in doubt of colour combinations, you can refer to the image above. If you want to learn more about different types of colour blindness you can visit the Colour-Blind Awareness Website.

  1. Text Sizing

Primarily you want to ensure that your text is an appropriate size, colour and font which is easy to read.

So, for colour, think either light coloured font on a dark background, or a dark coloured font on a light background. I have dyslexia myself and find it much easier to read black text on a yellow background which is also something to take into account.

And it is so important to think about the readability of your chosen font type. Print types of font (serif and sans serif) are generally easier to read than handwriting or calligraphy fonts (script) especially if you’re writing long blog posts, you want to keep the reader engaged. Time is precious and if your audience struggles to read your font, they’re quite simply not going to bother.

Sizing is slightly more complex. Yes, simply put, you want to make sure the size is readable. Think about your target audience here. If your target audience is in the 50+ age range, you will want to have a larger font to start with.

You will also want to check the quality when you zoom in. Ideally, you want your website to be responsive which means that when you zoom in and out the font reformats so that you can still read all the content from left to right. This is more difficult to programme depending on the software you have used to make it, so don’t worry if you can’t do this. Just check it out for yourself on different devices.

  1. Device Friendly

Similar to no. 3 you need to check the ability to resize text and imagery across different devices, ideally on a phone and tablet.

You will also want to check your imagery and colour scheme to ensure it is still readable on devices with different resolutions.

  1. Closed Captions

This is a simple one! If you have video content, subtitle your work. Most online video platforms like YouTube have editing software to enable you to add subtitles yourself quickly and easily!

  1. Tab-able keyboard friendly

Bear in mind that some physical impairments mean that users can’t use a touchpad or mouse so you have to make sure that your website can be navigated through their keyboard.

Don’t panic if you’re not up to scratch on your keyboard shortcuts. The simplest way to check this is by using your up and down arrows to scroll, tab to move between tabs on the page and enter to select links. So long as that works it’s keyboard compatible.

  1. Hyperlink Format

When you create a link in a post you want to describe the page it will lead to. You want to avoid links like Click Here or Read Now as they are an accessibility nightmare. So instead of:

Read up on Inside Theatre in our latest app of the month post click here.

Try:

Read up on Inside Theatre in our latest app of the month post

All pretty straight forward and as an added bonus this will also help you with your brand design and SEO!

If you want to know how accessible your website currently is just head to the Web Accessibility Website to check your page one by one, or looking at the Experte Accessibility Checker to assess them all at once! Just stick in your address! They’ll outline any problem areas of your website in terms of accessibility.

What have you done to make your website more accessible? Let us know in the comments below!

Cover page

The Brand Book: What it is and how to make it

Posted Leave a commentPosted in Branding, Graphic Design, Marketing

As your business expands so will you staffing base and it is important when you bring newbies aboard that they fully understand your company and your brand.

It may even be useful to have when you’re starting out as it can really resonate clarity in your presentation.  If you create a system of branding rules to stick to then your website and marketing material is bound to look super profesh!

A Brand Book can be an excellent way to not only create your parameters for your brand but also format it in such a way that is in keeping with your company’s branding.  This not only gives your presentation a clear vision but also allows others who join you, whether freelancers or employees, to quickly gain a full understanding of your business’ branding.

You may want to consider hiring a professional (like The Arts Business) to pull together your brand properly, especially if there is no one on your team with a graphic design edge. This document makes a statement for your entire operations so it’s important to get it right.

But, as I’m sure you know by now, here at The Arts Business we are firm believers in Doing It Yourself!

So, here’s how to make your very own!  You can pick and choose the aspects of Brand Book you want to enclose and as you grow, it can grow with you.

I’ll be working off The Arts Business’ very own Brand Book’s included sections and how to write them. Here is our lovely front cover!

 

Cover page

 

Click here to download The Arts Business Brand Book to follow along, use as reference or simply admire.

I will also chuck in some bonus headings you can include. Just pick and choose which ones are best suited to you and your business.

 

Contents Page

  1. Contents

Direct the reader to each section at the beginning. Simples!

 

brand book

  1. Mission Statement

Kick start the book with what the brand represents.  Officially it is a formal summary of the company, but I like to think of it as a series of bullet points telling the reader immediately what the company does and its goals.

 

  1. Core Values

Single Words or phrases that ring true with your company and its aims.  Have fun with this page. Really let your imagination run free with your design!

 

  1. Target Audience

Who are you trying to reach? This is so important to define as it will not only make your vision clearer but will help you to design growth and marketing strategies to ensure that your business is reaching the right people.

 

logo brand book

  1. Logo

Not only are you showing how your logo is displayed in colour, greyscale and how much space should be allowed around it but also any dos and don’ts for your logo. For example: don’t stretch or distort the logo, don’t recolour the logo. Don’t be afraid of details, your logo is one of the most important aspects of your brand and you want to make sure it always stands out.

 

  1. Tagline

Think of this like your company slogan. When starting out you want to make sure your tagline clearly explains what your company does, really spell it out for anyone who stumbles across your page organically! Here is your opportunity to display how you want your tagline to tie in with your logo and those ever so important dos or don’ts.

 

  1. Colours

In a nutshell this is the colours you want associated with your brand. It pulls your designs together. Be sure to include the:

  • HEX code: a six-digit number used particularly in coding.
  • RGB: it’s a mix of red, green and blue balance which dictates how the colour appears onscreen,
  • CMYK: stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key. This is the colour balance to recreate the exact same colours in printed materials.

Most brands include primary and secondary colours. Generally, (although not a rule) primary colours are those seen in the logo and secondary colours are used to compliment and offset those colours.

Some bigger brands even name their colour, so it is forever associated with their brand, for example: Spotify Green & Netflix Red.

 

font

  1. Typography

Similar to colours these are the typefaces you want your brand to use. Give a description of each font along with what and when it is appropriate to use them. You can use the terminology primary and secondary here again to create a font hierarchy. You can also include information about font format and weight.

 

  1. Social Media

A relatively new addition to the Brand Book and so important it takes up two pages. This should show what social networks your business uses and how to use them in keeping with your brand. Remember your dos and don’ts and be sure to use some illustrative imagery to explain exactly what to do. Social Media is one of the most important platforms for your company’s organic growth so if you’re not sure what sites to use or how you should check out our previous post on finding the perfect social media platform for your business.

 

  1. Photography, Illustration & Artwork

The Arts Business has chosen to group these items into a single category to explain simply and efficiently how to use imagery throughout the website and any branded documentation. Should your Arts Business focus on any of these elements you may want to break them down into individual categories to expand on how you use them for company branding.

 

tone of voice

  1. Tone of Voice

This is how you want your content to come across. Are you professional and corporate? Conversational and friendly? Explanatory and informative? It’s up to you how you want your brand to be portrayed but think carefully about your target audience appeal when making this decision.

 

brand book stationery

  1. Stationery

Stationery in this context includes branding like letterheads, email signatures and business cards. Pretty much any time your business presents itself in print. Use this page to show examples of your stationery and how you have incorporated your brand guidelines into the design.

 

  1. Flyers, Posters & Merchandise

Similar to stationery I have shown examples of flyers and merchandise The Arts Business has produced in the past to suggest how the logo might be used.

 

  1. Contact Details

Self-explanatory really! Whoever reads your Brand Book should be able contact you if they have any questions or simply want to congratulate you on a job well done!

contact us

I like to display my contact information in the same way:

  • Logo – make sure it’s there somewhere, doesn’t necessarily need to be above but somewhere on the same page! I like to think that subconsciously this means that when someone sees your logo, they automatically associate it with you contact details springing to mind but even if this isn’t true it still looks pretty.
  • Name and Job Title – not necessary to include with the Brand Book but if you think it is applicable to the document go for it!
  • Tagline – As I explained previously the company’s tagline is kind of like a one sentence pitch or explanation of what you do, so I try to include it at the beginning or end of official company documentation to remind anyone who may be reading it exactly what we do.
  • Phone Number,Email Address, Social Media, Website – make it as easy as possible for the reader to contact you should they have any questions.

 

  • Optional Extras
    • Brand Journey – your company’s origin story and brand history
    • Composition – how to arrange company documentation
    • Iconography – specifically about little, simple icons used throughout your branding
    • Animation and Video – should you include video content frequently with your work, you’ll also wanna specify guidelines for these
    • Product Line – should this be central to your brand, include it

 

There are loads of ways you can build your brand book so here are some links to awesome examples from companies of all shapes and sizes including:

 

Ultimately, don’t be afraid to get specific! Remember, it’s your business, your brand, your baby. It should be exactly how you want it to be!

 

Do you have a brand book to be proud of? Let us know! We’d love to share it.

Want The Arts Business to create a brand book for you? Get in touch.