Can AI images be considered Art with a capital A?
June 1, 2023
BeeVibrand | From Budding To Buzzing Brands
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No matter what the subject is, it’s totally normal that everything has some misconceptions that doesn’t completely line up with what the reality of it is. Do you think that building a website is an extremely difficult task that only experts can do? Or are you under the impression that marketing and advertising are the same thing?
We’ve curated a list of 6 misconceptions that we used to have about marketing and web development, and have now come to learn different.
One main misconception is that once you have built your website, and it is up and running, it will be a much easier process to attract clicks and gain new customers. It should be as simple as just making your website live to the public, and your website will appear and/or rank highly on any search engine results page.
Your work actually does not end at just having a website. To bring traffic to your website, you will need to keep working on it and updating it consistently. I used to think you could just write whatever fit your brand and its voice, but in actuality, so much keyword and SEO research needs to be done to have great and helpful content on your website so it can rank organically and be found by the right audience.
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. Simply put, this is the page that search engines like Google, or Bing, will show after a user submits a query in the search bar, or quote-on-quote “googles something”.
What will appear will consist of both organic results, and also paid results (advertisements) can appear at the top, in which businesses pay the search engine to appear that high on the results page.
Ideally, you will want your webpage to have a high SERP ranking as it has been shown that users will usually only pay attention to the first few suggestions, and will rarely even visit the second page of results.
Another mistake that can happen either when you are building your website, or when you are creating new content for your social media pages, is searching for an image and taking and using ones that you see on sites like google images or Pinterest.
That is a mistake that is actually quite illegal and might end up getting your content taken down, or even sued. We cannot use copyrighted artwork for commercial use because it is protected by commercial rights. So we cannot use it without receiving or buying the commercial rights from the IP’s (Intellectual Property’s) owner.
However, there are ways around using other’s images for your content, with it being completely legal, instead of having to take your own photos to use. A good trick to finding free images for commercial use is by using the filters in Google Images. Google Images gives you an option to search for images with Creative Common licenses, or Commercial and other licenses. Aside from using Google Images, there is also a plethora of free stock image libraries online such as Unsplash, Pixabay, or Envato Elements. Depending on which service you decide to use, some stock image webpages are completely free for you to use, and some require you to sign up to a paid subscription service. Aside from images, you can also get free fonts, free stock videos, free stock audio, and more online.
In a perfect world, you would be able to write absolutely anything, write what you like to write about, and write whatever you want on your website content, blog post content, and even your social media content. However, this isn’t necessarily 100% the case. Of course, you can write what you wish, and write about subjects that you understand or enjoy, but there is more to it than that. However, if you don’t consider yourself a writer, or if creative writing is difficult for you, you can always outsource your writing. This means you won’t be missing out on sending traffic to your website and you will be keeping your website to a higher standard.
1. Keyword Optimization
If you want to see a positive outcome to the work you put into your writing, you will need to tweak a few things to get the best results possible. A couple things just to gain more traffic to your page, or to rank higher when your written topic is being searched for, as mentioned earlier, you need to try and have maximum keyword optimization ie. Writing in specific keywords and phrases that are regularly put into a search engine bar.
2. Easy Readability
Something you may not consider for your writing is to have easy readability on your text. Ideally, you want to be writing at a 5th graders level. Simply because the more simplified your text is, the more people are going to be able to read it, therefore you will be reaching a wider audience. It’s very easy to get carried away with writing how you usually would outside of writing content, you end up using vocabulary that not everybody will understand. If your text too hard to understand, ie. Using “big words”, or words that are too industry specific, people will simply click off and go to the next website. You can check your readability by searching for a readability checker.
3. Make Use of Free Tools
The internet is filled with resources so don’t forget to use them! If you are struggling to come up with new ideas, or are having writer’s block, use free tools like Google or Answer the Public to brainstorm for subjects that will rank. Both Google and Answer the Public can give you ideas and show you what people are searching for, what questions they are asking etc. Doing this research before writing and publishing your content will help you tailor your content to your ideal customer persona.
Make sure to invest in tools to grab your traffic. It would be better for you to get a million impressions from combined keywords with 1% click-through than get 90% of people clicking your link from 20 impressions per month.
If you’re looking to learn how to make a website, it’s never been easier. YouTube is an incredible source of tutorials, guides, and how-to videos. With consistency, an outlet to practice, and the right channels to study from, you can make a website using popular CMS platforms like WordPress or Squarespace. WordPress is a highly customizable, open-source content management system. It is used by around 35% of all websites on the internet and is the number one choice for many business owners. It is arguably the world’s best option for a CMS platform.
A content management system (CMS) is a software that lets you create, edit, collaborate, publish, and store digital content. A CMS provides a user-friendly interface with tools to build web content without the need for code.
Beyond YouTube, you can also sharpen your web skills at online learning communities. Skillshare and Coursera are two examples of these types of sites that offer new opportunities to develop your coding skills. Learning how to code is important if you want to create a lasting, memorable website that is impactful and stays top-of-mind. However just because knowing how to code is important does not always mean it is necessary when it comes to creating websites, especially with excellent front-end development tools like Elementor at your disposal.
Front End Development Tools are software applications that help web developers build websites with ease. They dramatically increase the pace of work by providing drag-and-drop elements and pre-built features so that website creation is a painless process.
While we encourage the knowledge of coding, we would actually recommend against coding a website from scratch based off of our combined years of experience. The reason for this advice is that if you code a website from scratch, a subdomain is often created to view the mobile version of your website. In this day and age, mobile responsiveness is very important as almost everyone has a phone and over half of web traffic is mobile. However, the mobile subdomain damages your business’s SEO as it will compete for the desktop version of your website in SERP results. It is also generally slower and not as user-friendly.
Marketing and Advertising are two different things. Marketing is the process of determining what customer needs and how to best meet their needs. Advertising is the promotion of a company’s products or services through channels like social media, television, radio, and newspapers. In the heavily saturated world of companies vying for your attention, marketing is about cutting through the noise of a person’s available brain space and how people will find you.
To be successful in marketing, you need to think about more than just social media posts and trying to be seen. You need to do research and come up with creative content that resonates with your target audience. This will drive them to your site or social media platform. Otherwise, if you’re just posting on social media without consideration of the creative content you’re putting out, it might not be seen by the target audience you’re hoping for. Marketing is all about the psychology of your customers. The key to successful marketing is to understand what they want and how they think. One very effective way to do this is through the use of psychology-based marketing methods. The human mind is a powerful thing, and to make a profit or pull in customers, marketers use the power of psychology. With it, they can understand what people want, how to get their attention, and how to get them to buy certain services or products. They employ strategies like triggering emotions, understanding different demographics and how to manipulate groups to make a profit.
All of the Marketing Mix P’s have to work together so that you as a business can establish real estate in your customer’s brain space and stay top of mind. You can have an incredible product, but if you fail in areas like targeted ads or helpful customer service, people might not be able to find you or be willing to make a future purchase. It’s important to consider all aspects of marketing and its 7P’s when it comes to your business.
The 7 P’s of Marketing are Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical Evidence.
There is an assumption that 80% of marketing is just posting social media and ads, and that makes or breaks the success of a business. Yes, marketing includes these things. However, in reality, it is more than that. The 20% of marketing that people don’t see is what actually brings in 80% of the clients to a business. For example, investing in SEO, networking, blogging, case studies, and sincere and empathetic customer service are just a few tasks that are often overlooked. These tasks are not as obvious to the consumer but are just as crucial to the success of a business because they can’t bring in any clients without them.
The market is competitive and heavily saturated compared to what it was years and years ago. In this day and age, quantity and consistency of posting content on social media is just as important as quality – if not more. A good tip to keep in mind if you are a small business growing their following is that if you’re competing in a saturated platform, quantity is more important than quality. However, if you are on a new social media platform, quantity is more important than quality.
As you can see, Marketing is more than meets the eye. It’s not as simple or straightforward as it seems, but if you put the time and effort into it, the pay-off is worth it. If you are looking to start your own business or grow the following of your current one, keep these tips in mind for future success.
