Feb/100
First Edition of Friday Photos!
At Image Space Media we're all about the power of a good image. We're in the business of engaging people in images, after all.
We figured, however, that it was time to back up our words with evidence. Thus, Friday Photos was born. Every Friday we'll be featuring photos from our team, for many reasons. First, to showcase some photographic talent. Secondly, to show you how awesome the Image Space Media team is.
Our first edition of Friday Photos will probably be the most exotic. Our CEO/resident adventurer Jesse Chenard just returned from a 10-day trip, fulfilling his childhood goal of hiking Mount Kilimanjaro! AWESOME. Let's see the world through Jesse's eyes:
Jesse at Africa's Highest Point!!
Don't you wish this was the view out your window?
Sigh.
A Tanzanian butterfly
MEANWHILE, back in dreary New York, we had our own fun that involved no hiking, beautiful vistas, or exercise. But we have fun, nonetheless! Take a little peek into ISM Headquarters:
Feb/101
Publisher of the Week: DCODE MAGAZINE
This week, Image Space Media would like to recognize DCODE MAGAZINE as Publisher of the Week. DCODE is a hip webzine that features articles on almost anything you can think of...books, DVD's, music, movies, global shopper, global trends, design, health & beauty, style, sex & relationships, and tech stuff!
Click here to visit DCODE MAGAZINE & follow DCODE on twitter here
Feb/100
The Banner Blues: Combating Burnout and Blindness
via Jakob Nielsen for Useit.com
At Image Space Media headquarters, we're all pretty big proponents of online advertising (Cash Rules Everything Around Us, after all). We think it's a great way for publishers to financially support their passions and their expressiveness. And, of course, we believe we provide a unique and game-changing way for publishers to use their unique images to get paid.
But not all online advertising is effective online advertising. And it's not just you, getting sick of seeing the same banner ads above the sites you visit every day - it's a proven phenomenon called Banner Burnout, and it has very real implications for publishers and advertisers.
Let the stats do the talking: A study by DoubleClick found that after the fourth impression, CTR rates for banner ads go from 2.7 percent to less than 1 percent. That's pretty abysmal!
Photo via Flickr user jamescastle3
But before you can even worry about click through rates, there is the critical problem of Banner Blindness to deal with. As you can see from the amazing eyetracking studies shown above, created by Jakob Nielsen, the eye is automatically drawn to areas not dominated by ads. As Nielsen writes, "If users are looking for a quick fact, they want to get done and aren't diverted by banners; and if users are engrossed in a story, they're not going to look away from the content."
To combat the Banner B-problems, advertising experts suggest placing banners with animation, flashing bright colors, and cryptic messages at the top of your site. But what if that's not exactly the style you have in mind for your site? Remember, banner ads are not the only ad solution. These are many great advertising strategies to generate revenue - banner ads, Google AdSense and AdWords, in-text ads, Image Space media ads... Given the number of options in your arsenal, it's important to be tactical about your advertising solutions. How do you want your site to appear visually? Check out our online advertising tag for all of our past coverage of the various ways you can make ads work for your site.
Feb/100
Publisher of the Week: Something Picasso
This week, Image Space Media would like to recognize Something Picasso as Publisher of the Week. Something Picasso looks and feels like a diary, providing readers with a glimpse into the everyday interests of its author. We particularly enjoyed her post about tea.
Click here to follow Something Picasso on Twitter!
Feb/100
Image Space Media + SXSW 2010 Interactive
Visit Image Space Media at SXSW Interactive Festival March 12-16, 2010!
In just a few short weeks we'll be heading down to the SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. If you're unfamiliar with the event, the annual festival brings together the technology glitterati for five days of panels, showcases, meetups, and parties. Its a great place to connect with industry leaders, learn about new trends in the digital community, and hear about spunky startups -- like us!
We are thrilled to be launching our technology at SXSW! We will exhibiting at the trade show (word on the street we'll have a photobooth on the premise) so if you're attending, be sure to block off time in your schedule to grab a beer and a hot dog at our booth!
We'll also be live tweeting @imagespacemedia and updating our blog during the event. See you there!
Feb/100
Publisher of the Week: Design You Trust
Using duct, electrical, and vinyl tape, Rebecca Ward symmetrically aligns each color line.
This week, Image Space Media would like to recognize Design You Trust as Publisher of the Week. "Design You Trust is a daily design blog and community, full of new design trends,news and events, great design portfolios, young design bloods, design articles, photographies, fashion, creative advertisements, architectural inspirations, video design and hand-picked design stuff from all over the globe." If you would like to be a member of Design You Trust, just register here, read the rules and you are free to post away!
Visit Design You Trust to see images (like the one above), videos, and photos that will amaze you!
Click here to join Design You Trust's Facebook fan page & click here to follow them on twitter!
Feb/100
The Friendliest Moshpit in the World
Photo via Flickr user kirstiecat
Let's talk about common misconceptions of internet users. One fairly common belief is that the web is full of creepers -- people who post weird things on Craigslist and spend too much time stalking people on Facebook. Or, the internet is perceived to be full of nerds obsessed with 4chan and World of Warcraft. The last, possibly more recent misconceived notion of internet users is that they are plain old oversharers who Tweet, blog, and vlog every banality. The underlying understanding of the internet, based on these web archetypes, is that it is not a particularly earnest or friendly place.
Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor, co-founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and open source advocate, begs to differ. He believes that the internet is "made up of millions of disinterested acts of kindness, curiosity and trust." Watch his TED talk, where he illustrates using three examples that the transfer of data over the internet is best understood as crowdsurfing in a crowded moshpit, or as the process of passing a beer from the aisle to its recipient in the middle of the crowded row -- where none of the people in the middle who receive and then pass on the beer have any stake in its arrival but they do it anyway. Ignore the fact that I can't seem to write a blog post without talking about beer and pay attention to Zittrain, especially his example of the Wikipedia entry for Star Wars Kid.
Beyond Wikipedia and CouchSurfing, the inherent friendliness of the internet has very real implications for social media, for marketing, and for the work that we and you would like to accomplish. Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, illustrates how social media, aided with the use of LOLz, can harness the group-consciousness of the internet (his speech is shorter, don't worry).
Feb/100
The Ads of Super Bowl XLIV (Who Cares About Football, Anyway?)
I won't try to presume you're a Colts or Saints fan, and I won't even presume that you know that those are football teams. That Super Bowl XLIV is this Sunday may be news to you. I can be reasonably assured, however, that at some point you will watch a Super Bowl ad on YouTube. In an age of partisanship and global conflict, YouTube, the great cultural leveler, has united the masses over adorable cat videos and embarrassing local news segments. And creative advertising and commercials rank right below bloopers, clips of pets, and Lady GaGa music videos in terms of popularity.
The Super Bowl is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers to showcase their creativity. With millions of viewers, expectations are high. And some of the past decades most memorable commercials have first aired during the Super Bowl (see: Waaaasssuuuuupp). So what can we expect for this year?
Photo by volov via Pixmac.com
As always, there will be beer commercial upon beer commercial. The site I4U News reports that Anheuser-Busch InBev, the owner of Budweiser, Michelob, Stella Artois, and basically every other beer that you drink, is this year's biggest Super Bowl advertiser with five total minutes of ads (which cost the brewery $30 million, no big deal).
And beyond the expected focus on brews, this year's selection of ads has been surprisingly political. Focus on the Family, an evangelical church organization, will show a pro-life ad that features Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother -- a development that has been made more controversial by CBS' rejection of an ad for ManCrunch, a gay dating website.
If you want a run-down of all the ads, the content, and the agencies responsible, check out AdWeek's comprehensive Super Bowl XLIV Commercial Players Chart.
Having taken on the totally arduous task of watching most of this year's Super Bowl ads (it's a hard job, but someone has to do it), I have a few favorites:
Feb/101
Successful Blogs: From Start-Up to Follow-Through
Photo by Sureash Kumar via stock.xchng
Don't lie, you've done it before: started a blog with the best of intentions, had the drive to write a few stellar posts... and then fizzled out. I am certainly guilty of creating at least two blogs that are now abandoned, floating out in the blogosphere, and I will never tell anyone their names because they are too embarrassing.
So how can you avoid the flash-in-the-pan blogging phenomenon? ProBlogging and Chris Brogan's site are fantastic resources for would-be bloggers, written by industry veterans who have years of experience forming their own strategies for building successful blogs.
We have done you the service of aggregating the most helpful advice for the two hardest tasks of blogging: starting a great blog that will attract readers and, importantly, maintain your interest, and then keeping it going with posts that don't feel like a chore to write.
Nathan Hangen of Making it Social provides great tips for the first task of starting a blog in his article 10 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started. Here are some choice pieces of advice:
Narrow Your Niche
This is something that took me a long time to understand. I thought that by covering a bunch of topics, casting a wider net so to speak, that I would attract more people to my blog. The problem with that strategy is that when you do attract new visitors, you throw them off if your content isn’t consistent. They’ll wind up leaving and you’ll have to recruit new readers for every single post. So, try fishing with a spear instead.
When You Have a Blog, You are the Authority
Own It! – We blog from behind a desk and see our lives as imperfect or incomplete. However, to a customer or new reader, you have an incredible amount of authority. If you have gone through the work of publishing content, then you need to step up to the plate and own that content. Take the authority and use it. You might be a 6 or 7 (on a 10 point scale), but to that new person, you are a leader.
Start Networking Early!
I cannot emphasize this enough. Use Twitter, comments, and guest posting as a tool to meet new people. The wider your reach, the easier it is to get noticed. Don’t wait for people to come to you…get out and network. People love personal connections! Go to conferences and shake hands with other bloggers. You never know which contact could turn into a great guest posting opportunity, a JV deal, or a new devoted fan
But what happens if you start a blog you love and then lose that loving feeling? David Turnbull of Adventures of a Barefoot Geek wrote an awesome post on How to Ease the Pressure of Blogging, the highlights of which are after the jump:
Feb/101
Publisher of the Week: Steal the Style
This week, Image Space Media would like to recognize Steal the Style as Publisher of the Week! Do you admire Beyonce's effortless fashion sense? Ever wonder how to dress like Drew Barrymore? Look no further, Steal the Style is a great site for dressing and shopping like a celebrity! This style blog shows readers how to pull off fabulous outfits worn by celebrity fashionistas without breaking the bank. The next time you are in need of some fashion inspiration be sure to check out this fantastic site!
Hungry for more celebrity fashion? Follow them on Twitter and Facebook!