Learning web design at a young age is a great way to prepare your child for the future. As the world becomes more digital, web design and coding will become a necessary skill set for many people. And since children are naturally inquisitive by nature, they often want to learn about everything that’s new or different around them. This is why teaching web design from an early age can be extremely beneficial. Below are some ways you can teach your kid about web design:

1) Make It Easy for Kids to Learn
If you want your child to learn web design, make sure they have easy access to information. You don’t need to teach them a programming language right away to introduce them to web design. Instead, you could teach them about basic web design concepts through books or simple websites. The key here is to not overwhelm your child with technical details too soon.
Exposing them to web design topics gradually will help them understand how things work when it comes to designing websites. If he or she is interested in learning about web design, then it will come naturally over time.

2) Use Real-Life Examples
It may seem obvious but using real-life examples helps kids grasp certain concepts faster than reading about something online. For example, if you were talking about fonts with your child, show him/her pictures of actual typefaces used in print media such as magazines and newspapers. You may also use photos of real logos and other branding materials to demonstrate the role these elements play in website designs. Keep analogies simple and straightforward so that your child easily understands them.

3) Let Your Child Ask Questions
Like any other learning process, it’s inevitable that your child will have some questions along the way. Children are naturally curious and want to know how things around them work. Letting them ask as many questions as they want and answering their queries should be encouraged. This is a great way to encourage them to actively participate in the learning process. With more of their questions answered, they’ll feel more confident about learning different aspects of web design.

4) Equip Them with Tools and Resources
Another important part of teaching web design is making sure your child has the proper tools needed to get started. Providing them with a laptop or computer with the tools they need for coding can really accelerate their journey into web design. They can start browsing different websites or even play games that teach them how to code. There are also courses that allow children to learn coding through online lessons. Having a few resources on hand will make it easier for them to explore the possibilities of what they can do with web design.

5) Set Goals
A key element to any successful learning experience is setting goals. By having clear objectives, your child will know exactly what he/she wants to achieve – which ultimately leads to better results. When teaching your child about web design, you should set clear and concrete goals to help determine whether they’ve mastered each aspect of the skill.
You and your kid may want to work towards a project goal such as designing your own website. Or maybe they could just focus on improving their skills in certain areas such as creating a logo or understanding HTML. Whatever the case may be, having a goal helps your child stay motivated and focused during the course of their education.

6) Be Open to Your Child’s Ideas
Learning new skills can sometimes be challenging, and there’s no one way to approach this. However, being open to your child’s ideas is essential when it comes to introducing them to new concepts. Encourage them to think outside the box and consider all the possible ways they can approach web design. They may even find a variety of web design inspiration throughout the process. This will help them develop an interest in learning further.

7) Keep the Process of Learning Fun
As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, learning isn’t always fun. It requires patience, dedication, and hard work. But by keeping the process of learning about web design enjoyable, you have a better chance at helping your child improve their skills. There are many ways to keep the learning experience fun for them. For example, you can encourage them to join clubs or groups where they can interact with others who share similar interests. Some kids also enjoy playing games that them various skills related to web design.

In Conclusion
Web design is a skill that children can start learning at a young age. It’s one of the skills that will become increasingly valuable over time. That said, it doesn’t hurt to introduce them to web design early on. The earlier they begin to understand the basics of web design, the sooner they’ll gain the knowledge they need to succeed. Hopefully, after reading this article, you now have a better idea of how to help your child learn web design.

In today’s digital age, email marketing remains a proven technique to generate leads and maintain audiences. Though, it is also no secret that some of the campaigns still seem to be spammy which is why it’s imperative to be able to come up with the right approach. Successful campaigns require much preparation and time investment.

You must be content with starting small, slowly improving your current results as you genuinely connect with your readers to promote your brand. There are several ways to do this, especially when there is an email marketing guide for real estate, retail, insurance, and almost any other industry which could also help you increase your sales.

Despite the increasing popularity of other messaging platforms, email continues to be the main channel of communication with potential and existing clients. You get to lead them through the whole marketing funnel, encouraging them to subscribe or buy what you have to offer while being efficient in retaining them. To effectively utilize email marketing, here are some tips to remember when devising a successful email campaign.

Plan ahead and set a goal. This is the most crucial step as you’re basically operationalizing the big idea of email marketing. You should first answer the important questions such as what your goals are, target audiences and their benefits, and reasonable ROIs to expect. Identifying these will allow you to determine the kind of email campaigns that you need to send out.

You should take into account the number and frequency of your emails before loading them into an autoresponder. This would allow you to sustain the delivery of your email even for the new subscribers as it is already a planned series. Meanwhile, if you intend to do an email blast, it will be sent at the same time to everyone regardless of how long they’ve been subscribed. Doing this is especially useful when promoting a sale. There are basically two main considerations when creating email campaigns. This includes your email recipients and the templates you will be using.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let us zoom into defining a goal for your email campaigns. They could either be content-oriented or conversion-oriented which are both handy in improving your online presence. You only need to remember that a content-oriented email should be able to drive your reader to the desired action which is achievable through a compelling execution. On the other hand, a conversion-oriented one is more focused on attaining a certain ROI which should be strategically planned upon gathering useful consumer insights. After defining your audiences and goals, you should also be able to clearly communicate where potential customers can sign up before deciding how to do your content and scheduling them.

Establish a solid email list. It has been mentioned that you can either do an email series or an email blast when communicating with your subscribers. What you should do next is to ensure that you’re sending them out to the right audiences by segmenting your email list based on their customer journey or demographic location. You will be assured that your customers will only receive emails that are relevant to them which can improve overall campaign performance.

You can simply create a signup form on your website and even drive your audiences to it through social media to build your email list. It’s a pretty straightforward process so the way you present it must be enticing. You can also consider some marketing resources to help get your name out there, leading people to sign up.

Make your email look good. The way you phrase your subject line can make or break your email campaign. It is crucial to make an intriguing subject line in order to achieve the first goal which is for your email to be opened. You will then need to make sure that the rest of your content is balanced with the design. Do not overdo either of them.

Personalize your templates based on the kind of campaign you will be sending out. It’s important that your email structure is comprehensive and not overwhelming. You can be more creative with the main email body which is embedded in the template you’ve chosen. It’s alright to use various text formatting, photos, and GIFs among other things. Though, most importantly, do not forget a call to action which is the bottom line of all that you’ve come up with. While you use your brand voice in crafting your email content, always consider what would be relevant to your audience in the most engaging way.

As for the design, keep it direct so you can emphasize your message. Consider making a hierarchy of all the elements to be included with the most vital information on top. You can also code your own template if you want to have more control over your design. Lastly, make sure that your email is optimized for viewing on every device, especially when people are mostly on their mobile phones.

Test and analyze. It is a given to do A/B testing when executing an email campaign to ensure that you will be delivering only the most preferred content to your subscribers. This is part of your due diligence as a marketer as you analyze your metrics and audit your email to improve future campaign performances. You can also send your test email to your friends to get some feedback before testing in different email clients. It might be a lot of work to come up with a couple of versions of your emails but it will be worth it with the insights you can gather.

These are only some of the tips you should employ when running an email campaign. Research which software can help you and your company best before anything else. A good email marketing app will certainly be a good investment as long as you are properly prepared with a clear understanding of how it works and a well-defined goal. Don’t be afraid to run experiments and improve your results!

Author: Kat Sarmiento

Organization Tips For Project Managers

Project Managers are the key players in managing, organizing, and planning a business, team, or company project. If you are a project manager, it is essential to understand that having excellent management and organizational skills will help you handle the work. A messy and unorganized system will only cost you and your team’s time, effort, and energy. Keeping neat and organized project management will reap benefits as you can avoid stress, overwhelming workload and keep yourself productive and protected from burnout.

Here are six ways that other project managers do to stay organized in their work and management.

1. Use a Project Management Software/Tool

Using a project management tool to help you manage projects you need to work on will improve your system and handling of the tasks. These tools will aid you to become more organized in all of your files, data, projects, and works need to assign and delegate. It is best to research and use the most comfortable software you think you can work with to help you. Use project management software to let you manage and monitor all the projects you and your team need to do. Learning other organization tools and ways such as email organization tips can assist you in maintaining a systemized communication with your team that can allow you to assign projects better to them.

2. Set Objectives and Milestones To Meet

There are no better ways of working than having concrete goals to accomplish at the end of the day. Like other project managers, you need to set definite and realistic objectives to achieve. It would always lead you to assess your reasons and priorities in work. This will help you create decisive decisions in your management, determine which should come as the top priority among your projects, and ultimately assess if you have landed an achievement or milestone in your progress. Break down these objectives into smaller milestones to keep the motivation and sense of achievement ongoing.

3. Set clear schedule and deadlines

No project should take forever to achieve, and no project should have sacrificed quality to complete. Based on your decided priorities and goals, it should now be clear to you which projects must take precedence. This would help you to become more organized as setting clear schedules and deadlines are possible. Schedule and deadlines will guide you better in your project management. It will let you and your team if you’re behind or ahead of time in your work.

4. Track the progress

One way of keeping organization as a project manager is to track your entire progress. This is not limited to the progress of the projects you’re handling but also the progress of other workers under your supervision. Time tracking among your projects and team members will let you assess if everything is right on track or how long or close you are to meeting your objectives. It will also help you become aware of any measures to take in case a problem arises in the process.

5. Maintain communication

Working remotely should not hinder establishing communication and connection among the team regarding the projects as a project manager. You must communicate with other employees regarding the status of the project you assigned to them. Organization among work is impossible to attain without solid communication and understanding of everyone under your management. As a project manager, it is best to have a channel that everyone can use to communicate with each other to have an easier and more efficient way of reporting. It could also help you track the progress of every project that you delegated to your members and deliver the ideas and expectations you have for each work.

6. Ensure that everything is within expectations

There will always be problems arising at work, and it is something inevitable most of the time. One key of organization in project management is expecting completed projects following certain expectations. This can avoid workload or problems like a necessary re-evaluation of projects or delays in deadlines and schedule. You check and ensure that there are no conflicts that hinder the team members regarding projects they are working on, such as misunderstandings. Project managers are hands-on in managing and delegating tasks. There are set expectations and criteria in each work, and everything in the management should proceed smoothly as expected.

Conclusions

Organization is vital for project managers. As planning, managing, and controlling the workflow of projects are central to being a project manager, keeping a neat and organized system is crucial. There are various ways and combinations you can use to supervise projects and be able to organize them. Each procedure in project management should be organized, from setting the objectives and schedules down to managing the team members and entrusting certain tasks to them.

Author: Kat Sarmiento

Regardless of the type or size of a business, marketing is important. It helps to get your name out there, increase your brand awareness and ultimately, increase revenue. More often than not, this means combining traditional resources with some innovative technologies.

Fortunately, marketers nowadays have a seemingly endless supply of marketing tools available, so the only question remains which of these are the best to use. Here are some of the most effective marketing resources from which every marketer can benefit.

1. Email Subscriptions

While some might consider them old-fashioned, emails still continue to be one of the most effective tools to give and receive information related to customer engagement.

A customized email subscription list is an excellent way to interact with potential customers and provide them with regular updates on your sales, promotions, and so on.

Whether the messages are generated on the company’s website or through an online email marketing platform, they should be designed to be used on all types of devices.

2. Social Media Platforms

Even if you have your own website perfectly optimized for customer engagement, social media can make content distribution much easier. As a marketer, you want to make sure you are reaching as many potential clients as possible.

Through social media platforms, users can react quickly, and you can track their responses in real-time. This can help gauge the effectiveness of your campaign and make any improvements in it if needed.

While creating a Facebook page is an obvious starting point, it’s best to focus your energies on the 2 to 4 social media outlets that are most relevant to your business.

3. Traditional Resources

Even though online marketing has become a necessary component of any marketing strategy, traditional marketing channels still are helpful for many businesses. Radio stations, newspapers, and other media channels can also be employed successfully for these purposes, even if used in innovative ways.

Similarly, the use of business cards is greatly appreciated as well, and they can be easily made here. These have the convenience of having a tangible form of promotional material, yet they also appeal to the younger generations.

We may be living in a modern age but people still like marketing materials such as posters, leaflets and business cards that they can touch and feel.

4. Project Management System

The best project management systems allow a marketer to delegate tasks to other members of the marketing team. With this method, they can track all the steps that need to be taken a lot more effectively. With the latest project management software, such as Monday.com, this task has become more streamlined than ever.

A unified marketing system that provides more control makes it possible for everyone on the marketing team to be aware of the overall goals. It also helps prevent any mishaps that can occur during the planning stages of a marketing strategy.

5. Marketing KPIs

The effectiveness of a marketing strategy is measured through its key performance indicators (KPIs). A marketer needs to establish a couple of predetermined metrics and measure the campaign’s performance against those.

These metrics can include all the data from occasionally recurring revenues sources, monthly sales records, and even the number of contact form submissions. These ready-made indicators are designed to work on a wide variety of businesses and still provide a truthful picture of the marketing strategy they have in place.

Conclusion

A proper marketing tool used at the right moment can take any advertising strategy to a whole new level. When developing your marketing strategy, it’s important to look at which marketing tools can help you to achieve your goals.

Author: David Fletcher

Setting up a promotion plan for a new small business can be tricky. You are low on money, having spent any budget on your product, stock, or web design. You probably had no idea how much promotion would be needed to get yourself out there. Plus, you’ve spent a little on tentatively targeted ads and they got you absolutely nowhere. If this sounds familiar, don’t worry -we’ve got this! Here is how you can promote your new small business for free.

Brand, Brand, Brand

Branding your business is something that can cost no money and boost your following dramatically. It should be at the forefront of your mind before anything else. Take your business idea and write a brand plan that is designed to appeal directly to your target audience.

Create a business name that stands out, but that states clearly what you offer. Do not overcomplicate it and ensure that the name is not used by another business. Check social media to ensure your name is free to use, so that all your social handles match. Remember to also check the availability of your chosen domain name. You can check this for free at Google Domains.

Design a logo for free online. Keep it clean-cut and ensure it shows off your business. Be selective over the colours and style you use for your logo, as this design will be incorporated into all your future branding.

Create a branded business card online for free at BusinessCards.co and print them at home to save money on extortionate printing costs. Distribute your cards to local businesses, friends, family and colleagues.

Promote Your Brand

Using your brand to promote your business is rule number one in free promotions. When you use a logo on all your content, it enables your audience to start to recognize that the content they are enjoying is brought to them by your business. They might read a few of your articles or watch a few videos before they click on your link. This is normal. By adding your logo and handle, you are letting consumers know who you are and where to find you.

Collaborate

A great free way to promote yourself is to collaborate with other businesses. Be creative and bold about this. The best way is to direct message the business you are interested in and let them know what you want and what you can offer.

Many new business owners are hesitant to do this. But having the confidence to go for what you want is a major factor in entrepreneurial success.

Collaborations do not have to involve money. Think of it as a bartering system. If you share three of their posts in a month, they share three of yours. Or if they add your website link to their bio for a week, you do the same for them. If you both have the same target audience but offer different services, it can be a fantastic win-win all-around.

Talk Loudly

Go out and tell people what you are doing. Let them know how much you love your business. If you go to a family barbeque, tell them all you’d love a follow on social media for support. Or if you take your children swimming, wear your branded t-shirt and spark some conversations.

Speak about your business online too. Join all the Facebook groups and forums related to your business and tell people what you are doing. Many of these groups do not allow advertising. Be casual about it; drop it into conversation or in a comment under another person’s post. You don’t have to add a link to your business. Just let them know what you offer and use the keywords that are related to your business in what you write.

Get blogging and write about your business. This costs nothing but time and can be a great way to promote yourself. Ensure that you learn a little about SEO before setting out and optimize what you write for best results.

Promoting your small business for free is all about letting people know you exist. Get your audience involved in your business and create a positive space where every day is like an event.

Author: Harvey Dunn

If you thought you worked in a fast-paced environment, social media runs even faster than the busiest workplaces, with more being added to it every second of every day.

It can be easy to get lost in people’s timelines, get discouraged at the lack of likes or comments to a particular post that you spent a lot of time and effort crafting to entice new customers to come into your store or browse your website.

However, it is not impossible to make the process easier for you and your staff to navigate and optimize your efforts and make the most out of every single post!

Below, we’re looking at some tried and true methods for streamlining your social media presence.

Know Your Tone

Even if you’re speaking the same language as your customers on the surface, there may still be some aspects of your business that might not translate as well.

For example, if you’re trying to post about how your product can benefit the customer. But you’re using lots of scientific jargon that most people won’t understand; it can be an issue.

Try to be as relatable as you can with your audience. If needed, try to adopt some colloquial slang to help you connect with your target audience and industry.

Consistency is vital! So don’t just put all of your newfound efforts into one social media post and be done with it.

Keeping a consistent tone throughout all of your social posts and campaigns will earn you credibility.

At the same time, you’ll want to make sure the logos and imagery you use on your social feeds are consistent. You can create a brand new logo for free using Logo Creator!

Use A Notifications Hub

If you’re managing multiple different social media accounts for your business, it can be not easy keeping track of all of the activity on each platform all at once.

For this reason, consider using a cross-platform tool, such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social.

These help keep track of all relevant notifications, messages and analytics on each of your social media accounts.

In turn, these tools can prevent you from spending unnecessary hours trying to catch up on one platform before moving on to the next one.

Having all of your notifications neatly arranged in one place will help you gain a clearer picture of how well your content is performing and give you more insight into how your followers are engaging with your posts and accounts.

Recycling Posts For Maximum Viewership

Since new posts are added to timelines by the second, social media posts (particularly those on Twitter) have a very short lifespan.

This means that only so many people will view a post in a given time frame before it gets buried under new content and people stop engaging with it.

There’s no harm in recycling posts that you want more people to engage with, such as promotions, events, collaborations, etc.

You shouldn’t constantly hit the retweet button every few minutes so that one post dominates your followers’ timelines. But a friendly reminder to any important dates or special discounts is never a bad idea.

It’s not guaranteed that every single follower will see each post that you put out there.

So by recycling important content, you will increase your chances of having more people see it even when you first posted it a few weeks ago.

Planning And Scheduling Social Media Content

As a small business owner, it’s practically impossible to oversee all of your business’s daily operations and remain active and engaged on social media.

That’s why it’s crucial to create a social media calendar ahead of time and to stick with it over time.

Having a calendar in place ensures that you’ll always know what to post and when.

Then, you can pair this tactic up with a social media scheduling app like Buffer, and then, you’ll be able to see back and focus on your business while your social followers still get their daily dose of content from your brand!

Author: Corey Obrien

Call-to-Actions (or CTAs) reel in and turn readers into customers. However, simply inserting a square with “Click Here” text is not going to cut it.

What is even more surprising is that, according to a 2013 Small Business Trends survey, 70% out of the 200 smalls businesses (with 100 employees or less) polled did not have a CTA on their homepage.

Find out why you need to incorporate CTAs in your marketing strategy, plus small adjustments you can make to boost your CTA creation strategy.

But First, What Is a Call-to-Action (CTA)?

In a nutshell, a CTA is a button on a webpage that incentivizes readers to do something. Think of it as a non-monetary business transaction—a give and take, so to speak, between the reader and company.

This could be subscribing to a company newsletter to get the latest information in the industry or a free PDF or product in exchange for the reader’s email address. In other words, it is a win-win.

Where Should CTAs Be?

If you only decide on placing a CTA on one page, do it on your homepage. That way, you instruct the reader what to do. If not, you risk readers pulling a “skim and leave”—which can affect bounce rates.

Ideally, you should have a CTA on every page. However not every CTA has to be the same; it comes down to what you want the reader to get from the page.

For instance, on the service page, do you want the reader to demo the service? Or would you rather have the reader contact you for a quote? Or what about going to the pricing page to learn more about the different packages your company offers?

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

CTAs and Pop-Up Ads

According to a Search Engine Land article, the new Google Chrome browser will block all pop-up ads in the upcoming year.

The reason being, Search Engine Land states, is that Google wants to provide users the best customer experience possible, with a Hubspot survey indicating that right now this is not the case; 73% of users polled admitted to disliking pop-up ads.

What this means is that CTAs on pop-up ads (annoyingly?) inciting readers to subscribe or purchase said product or service may be a thing of the past. If anything, thanks to Google’s changes, you can expect to see less of them.

But does this mean you should insert pop-up ads (with CTAs) on your company website? As the survey and the future change in Google Chrome’s browser show, maybe not.

Nonetheless, a study (by marketing automation company, Sumo) analyzed roughly 1.75 million pop-up ads, with the top 10 pop-up ads bringing in a 9.28% conversion rate.

2 Ways to Increase Your CTA Creation Strategy

Pop-Up ads or no pop-up ads, CTAs will continue to be an important part of your marketing strategy. To make your CTAS more attractive to your readers, find out easy adjustments you can make, suggested by a web-design expert Lilo:

1. Color Matters… When You Consider Who Your Target Audience Is

There is a common misconception that each color gives a specific impression. For instance, red is passionate, blue is calming, and green is neutral…

Still, color is important… but it is not as “black and white” (pun intended). According to Expresstext, the “right color” pinpoints the consumer’s reaction and how they perceive it in relation to the company’s brand.

Take brown, for example, which would not work with a women’s clothing company. But, as Entrepreneur points out, would be appropriate for a camping company, as brown (in this case) denotes ruggedness.

Photo by Anna Jiménez Calaf on Unsplash

Cultural Differences on Color

Then again, you have to consider your target audience: What is their culture? What are their experiences? Are they men, women, or both?

For instance, in the US pink would not be appropriate for a professional men’s football team. The reason being comes down to American’s impression that pink is more feminine and should be for girls, while blue is more masculine, and should then be for boys (while ironically in the past, it was the opposite).

According to The Japan Times, Japan is obsessed with the color pink, connecting it to the cherry blossom—Japan’s unofficial flower.

Unlike the US, in Japan, it is perfectly appropriate for a professional men’s football team to wear pink jerseys. In fact, Cerezo Osaka, a professional Japanese men’s team, does.

Gender Differences in Color

And then there’s gender. Entrepreneur goes so far to state that, while men and women both like blue the best, in general, women like colors that have shades of white in them. Men, on the other hand, like colors with shades of black.

How Does Culture and Gender Relate to Your CTA Creation Strategy?

Knowing your target audience’s culture and gender will help determine what color(s) to make your CTAs.

Perhaps a company with a demographic base of Japanese men could consider dark pink CTAs? While a camping company that has a target audience of American women may go with light powdery brown?

At the same time, it is important to factor in the colors of the logo and on the website. The first company may not want dark pink CTAs if their logo and company website has several shades of pink. Which brings us to…

Contrast, Contrast, Contrast

No matter what color you choose, it needs to contrast against the rest of your website. You want it to stick out so your readers have an easy time seeing (and clicking) on it.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

2. Make the CTA Specific and Reader-Friendly

How does the reader benefit by clicking on your CTA? What do you want the CTA to accomplish? In answering these questions, you can figure out what the CTA message should be.

Also, aim for a big font. (This goes for text in general). A 1929 study indicated that people had the easiest reading 12-point font. (Of course, this was for non-digital text). Nowadays, that number (especially when it comes to digital print) is bigger.

Final Thoughts

It is crucial to having CTAs on your company website; they help conversion rates and increase profits. Have any more CTA creation strategy tips? Leave a comment.  

Information Gathering

• Have you ever wondered what sort exposure an old email might have?
• Perhaps an employee, old or new, is using Facebook to discuss sensitive business information?
• Or maybe your just curious about your digital footprint across the internet?

We’ve got you covered! by using the latest open source techniques, methodology and software, with just a few pieces of identifiable information were able to offer you a complete picture. From correlations with forgotten accounts, to places you’ve forgotten you used. it’s always worth knowing.

Network Penetration Test

With network security being an over looked issue among many businesses, it’s often the golden bullet for malicious attackers. when everything from Wi-Fi to physical network devices can be incorrectly configured, it’s hard to ignore the chills.

That is why having an all in one place information management system is good for business’ in keeping information secure.

We provide peace of mind, either at home, on site or anywhere else of your choosing. We’ll figure out your weak spots, patch them up, and away you go!