Our thoughts, opinions, and ideas on all things brand strategy, digital marketing, social media marketing, post-production, content creation, and graphic design.
Dropmark: The Place for Everything
What’s Dropmark?
Nina Kay Digital has A LOT of digital assets, websites, resources, and thoughts to keep track of and to keep organized (both for our firm and for the clients we represent). Dropmark is our favorite tool to organize all of this. Because of Dropmark, we can visually organize and systemize all of our assets, deliverables, communications, and thoughts and then turn that into visual collections that are easy to navigate through. (Dropmark, Purpose 2022)
Why Dropmark?
Dropmark is for the visual thinker who finds themselves wishing to turn their assets, deliverables, and thoughts into visual collections that are organized and easy to search through. Dropark is a cloud meant to stand the test of time – they intend to be a safe place to archive thoughts, assets, and resources ‘till the end of time'. (Dropmark, Purpose 2022) This platform is a great place to keep your stuff (in digital format) safe for years to come.
Not only is Dropmark good for visual collections but it’s also good for team communication and collaborations. Dropmark is a secure platform where coworkers and employers can share important data. Instead of sending unengaging spreadsheets, graphs, or text in reports, meetings, and presentations - we can use Dropmark to share relevant and engaging information with others to better communicate. (Dropmark, How Tattly Gets Things Done 2019)
Our Favorite Features
Some of our favorite features over at Dropmark are:
Forever Archive: Dropmark boasts that for over a decade people, teams and companies have trusted them as their trusted visual archive. (Dropmark, Purpose 2022)
Ad-Free: Whether you are using the paid version or not, Dropbox keeps its platform ad (and distraction) free. (Dropmark, Purpose 2022)
Scan Documents: On their mobile version you can take pictures of important stuff and turn them into PDFs. This is great for digitalizing important documents. (Dropmark, Blog 2021)
Best Part of the App: We love the plugin (for Windows) and the app for Mac the most. It allows us to share content, ideas, or resources easily to strategic Dropmark files straight from the source.
Worst Part of the App: We love that we can look at live websites from inside our Dropmrk flies however if a website needs a password (like social media, email, etc.), it doesn’t let you look at it via the platform unless you sign in every time you want to see it. Dropmark should allow users the ability to save passwords to prevent having to enter passwords redundantly.
Can Dropmark Be Used On Mobile Devices & Desktop?
Yes! You can use both seamlessly together, too. The only difference between the mobile and desktop versions with Dropmark is if you have an Apple product. With Dropmark on Apple, you can take pictures of documents or photos, scan files and upload them to strategic folders as a PDF files. Another thing I like about using this apple on an iPhone is that you can use it to aid in Air Dropping files to a Mac.
Does Dropmark Cost Money?
There is a free version and three paid versions of Dropmark. (Dropmark, Plans 2022)
Lite: Dropmark’s basic plan includes all the basic features you need to successfully run Dropmark such as:
Links
Files
Videos
Text
App access for iPhone, iPad, and Mac
Secure sharing
The ability to import/export data.
Solo - $4.00: The Solo package is built with the average freelancer in mind. This package has everything that the lite package has but it also has:
Unlimited collections
The ability to add collaborators and clients to boards
The ability to group items into stacks
The ability to gather feedback from clients or your team
Custom analytics and domains for posts
Team - $5.00: The Team package is built to be a digital space to collaborate in. This package comes with everything Solo does plus:
An additional Team dashboard
The ability to add multiple users and clients
The ability to give team members roles
Billing
High amounts of storage space
Slack integration
Enterprise – Custom Quote: The Enterprise package is a package built with organizations in mind. This package comes with all of the Solo & Team features plus:
The ability to add 100s of users
The ability to group users into smaller groups of teams
Support priority
Custom branding options
Custom hosting options
Sources Cited
Blog. Dropmark. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://www.dropmark.com/blog/
How tattly gets things done. Dropmark. (2019, February 12). Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://www.dropmark.com/blog/how-tattly-gets-things-done/
Plans. Dropmark. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://www.dropmark.com/plans/
Purpose. Dropmark. (n.d.). Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://www.dropmark.com/purpose/
Video Marketing 101
What is video marketing?
Video marketing is when you use videos that you make to market products, tell stories, or portray ideas. Videos have been used to market ideas/services/products on social media because they aid in audience retention. In a time where people are endlessly scrolling by various forms of media, well-made video content helps people stop scrolling & helps your chance at someone seeing your video. Algorithms for Instagram and Facebook specifically love video content and ensures your post is seen by more of your followers when video content is attached. A study done by HubSpot Research found that 50% of consumers would prefer to hear from brands in video format (more people wanted that vs any other type of mediums brands can produce).
Video marketing isn’t a new strategy for digital marketers. What is new is the number of platforms there are that are video-based. Thanks to apps like Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Youtube, and Facebook Watch - our culture is bombarded by content - plenty of it in video format. Instead of being one route of marketing that a brand can take, video marketing has now morphed into something that should be the focus of any social media or marketing effort.
It’s Not That Scary
A lot of people think that producing a video-based format is a complex process with an intimidating learning curve. Fortunately, we live in a day in age where producing video content is easier than ever. The ability to shoot high-quality content is in our palms. Apps and programs that offer templates and presets make what was once complex to do quite simple.
If you are interested in reading on some basic video marketing strategies you can use & about post-production programs you can use to make great-looking content - keep reading. Some products do have learning curves. If you find yourself frustrated or not wanting to edit your video content - feel free to contact us about our post-production video/audio services. We’d be happy to tutor you on how to navigate these programs, do it for you, or both. Click here to contact us for more information.
Types of Marketing Videos
Video content can help your brand gain credibility by offering captivating and professional content that informs or entertains (or both). This makes for a digital cocktail that is highly effective in not only building brand awareness but also turning your target audience into paying customers. If you wanna make your audience laugh, teach them something, or leave an emotional impact - well-produced video content is the perfect tool to do just that.
‘Ok. But what type of videos should I make?’, you might be asking.
Here are 9 types of videos that are used in video marketing.
Show & Tell Videos - AKA Demo Videos. Show how your product works or show a video of behind the scenes stuff/your process.
Brand Videos/Commercials - Usually a branch of an advertisement campaign that gives consumers general overviews about the company’s mission, product/service, etc.
Event Videos - Any time your company interacts with the community is a great time to make video content. Stuff like this makes for great live stream content as well.
Interviews - This is a great way to capture your audience's attention. Providing a valuable resource like video content of an interview with a leader in your industry is a great form of marketing. Think about it this way - let's say you interview a voice in your industry. Then you upload to your social media platform of choice…you have the opportunity to tag who you interviewed and appeal to an entirely new audience.
DIY Videos - Never be scared to share how to do the things you are an expert at. You really can’t go wrong with sharing what you know for free. Why? When you share what you know, you build credibility with those who are listening to you. You give two things: the power to do something themselves if they choose or a potential client if they don’t want to do it themselves. Most of the time, when we share how to do something, our services will often still get purchased because people just don’t have the time to always break a complex learning curve or understand how to do something.
Animated Videos / Motion Graphics - Great for audience retention when dealing with complex ideas or messages with a lot of data to relay.
Proof of Concept - One of the best ways to get customers are video testimonials. Interview those whose lives you have touched and show it off. I’m willing to bet this will get you clients - proof of concept is key to making money as a business owner.
Live Videos - In my opinion, this is where the money is right now. What I love about live streaming is that right now social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter love those who go live and they reward it by notifying all your followers that your live. When you go live, your list gets notified that you are doing so. It’s free advertising really - because everyone sees your name flash across their screen. Saved live content also makes for great content down the road.
Personalization - Video messages that are customized to who you are speaking to are a great way to connect in today's day in age. We tend to hide behind screens but when we make a video with our face we stick out! It’s a rare enough gesture that it demands attention from whoever it’s for. Effective and organic outreach content gives you a greater chance of converting people who consume your content to potential clients.
How to Make Effective Video Content
From concept to creation: here is how to make a video.
Plan it - What is the purpose of your video? Make sure it has a call to action. Who is the video's target audience? When will you post it? What is the budget? How will you gauge the video’s success? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you make effective content.
Script it - Most videos need a script to make sure all points are touched. Without one, you might find yourself on the cutting floor more often than you want to be. Write out the script like you would a report or blog.
Capture it - Know what you’ll capture your movie with. The average phone nowadays is high quality enough to make great video content if you are just starting it's a good tool.
Edit it - There can be quite the learning curve attached to editing programs. It can also be a pricey investment to get great programs. Fortunately, there are programs for all types of budgets and levels of skill. Our favorite video editing tools are Adobe Rush, Adobe Premiere Pro & Adobe After Effects. Adobe Rush probably has the smallest learning curve and is available both on desktop and mobile. There are many others but that’s a whole other blog post!
A great place to learn these tools is on Adobe’s website or Youtube. If you need tutoring or want me to edit your videos for you - click here contact me and we can talk about what I can create for you.
Host it - Where will you host your video? Places like Youtube, Vimeo, or self-made servers can host your video content.
Post it - Take the link from your video and share it on your social media platform of choice.
Analyze it - One reason we like a video is that after a week or two you have really useful data given to you on your dashboard (usually found where hosted). This data gives you valuable data like how long the average consumer is watching your video for, where your audience lives, what sex your audience is, and how old they are.
Best of luck creating your video.
Identifying Your Target Audience: Why It’s Important & How to Do It
Before you establish your visual identity, before you make content, before you start posting on social media: know who your target audience is.
‘Why is that the first thing I need to do?’
Glad you asked. I’ll answer your question with a question: How can you create effective content that connects you to your audience if you don’t know who your audience is? You need to identify key elements about your audience to market to them effectively. I say this because you shouldn’t plan on marketing to 20-year-old girls the same way that you would market to 50-year-old men. Marketing isn’t a one-sized fit all.
If you want to be able to identify your target audience, be able to gather information about your audience, and improve how much you know your audience so you can make more accurately targeted content- keep reading.
When you don’t target your content, your content becomes aimless. While it is true that great content will attract a crowd, if you don’t target a specific audience it’ll be really hard to attract a specific crowd and get specific results.
When working with clients that are establishing their visual identity, I will often give them a questionnaire to help best identify their brand. I ask things like…
What problems do your products or services solve?
Who are your current customers?
Who is your competition? Why should potential customers choose you over them?
After answering these questions you’ll be able to answer these questions about your audience and the content you make for them:
Who is going to look at my content?
What is my competition doing? Can I do it better?
Why should my customers look at my content vs my competitors?
We know it can be overwhelming to think about all this stuff but it’s simpler than it at first appears to be. Don’t think too deep into it. These answers will soon turn to the stepping stones that guide you in identifying your content core.
Finding Your Content Core
The purpose of identifying your content’s core is so that you can know what to talk about to best promote what you do. It’s not always important to talk about yourself, your services, your products, or the problems you solve. Sometimes you need to talk about the things your customers are talking about. Sometimes you need to talk about relevant things in your chosen industry. We try to make Nina Kay Digital’s content be 20/80. 20 percent about us and our services, 80 percent about entertaining or informative stuff that my audience wants to hear or needs to know.
Tips to Find Your Target Audience
-Create Target Audience Profiles. By creating your ideal consumer profile you will be better suited to spot your target audience in real-time when the time is right. These won’t always directly reflect what your target audience ends up looking like but it’s a great place to start. Here’s a sample of a Consumer Profile that I made for a cosmetics company.
Tip: When you first start you might not have an audience to speak to yet. Using your ideal consumer profile, you can then make content geared towards that consumer. This will help you speak to your audience even if they haven’t found you yet. This will help you convert people from looking at your content to sales.
-If you have a pre-established audience (big or small), you can ask them some valuable questions This helps you know what your audience is thinking so you can best accommodate their needs and wants. When figuring out what questions to ask them keep in mind to make questions simple to fill out to aid in audience retention.
-If you have a website or Facebook group or an account with Google Analytics, you can use these dashboards to collect data for your audience. You can use this data to avoid making incorrect assumptions about where your audience is or what they want to see.
Once you know WHO your target audience is it’s important to then figure out what their pain points are. What do they want to do better? What stresses them out? Solving your consumer’s problems will give your content credibility and traction. Use this new-found knowledge to make content that is useful to your audience.
Tips for Creating Content that Converts
Share the benefit! Most people confuse features with benefits. Try not to do this. In other words, focus on the needs of your consumer vs your need to sell. Produce content that helps your audience be & do better. Information to help people solve problems on their own is one of the best forms of free marketing there is.
Always make sure your content has a call to action it. You got to tell your audience what to do. When you are direct, it leaves no room for misunderstandings. When you try to make sure every piece of content you make has some type of basic call to action, you will get better conversions. Don’t be shy!
When you see a lack of conversions with the content being made it’s usually because of an unclear call to action. Want someone to share your post? Say it! Want someone to sign up for your newsletter? Say. It. You can’t expect anyone to read your mind.
Don’t forget. Great content starts with a great understanding of your target audience! Now go out there and make some awesome stuff.
If you are still feeling overwhelmed after reading all this - Nina Kay Digital offers assistance in identifying your target audience, content strategy, and content creation. Contact us today and let us know if we can help you!
5 Color Palette Ideas
Not knowing what colors you want your content to be can feel super overwhelming. I don’t know about you but I tend to spend a long time looking at inspiration for the perfect color palette all the time.
It’s pretty common knowledge that color directly influences your energy/vibe…but did you know that it also plays a major role in your brand identity? The right choice of colors will entertain and captivate your audience-this aids in audience retention and gives your brand a better platform via your color selections.
The right color palette will entertain and captivate your audience and show off your brand's identity in a way that words would never. To stand out against your competitors and to ensure consistency across all your marketing materials. Said consistency is what will aid in audience retention and is what will build up your digital credibility. You must put aside some time and energy into creating an effective color palette.
Below you can find five color palettes that I designed for you on Illustrator. I used photos that I gravitated to and used the eye drop tool to pull the colors that spoke to me out of the photo. After I selected my colors, I combined the photo that inspired me and the colors/hex codes for your reference. You can either use these color schemes or use my palette boards as inspiration so that you can make your own.
If you end up making a color palette, do send it my way- I would love to see what you come up with.
Photo credit: Adobe Stock Designed on Adobe Illustrator
Photo credit: Adobe Stock Designed on Adobe Illustrator
Photo Credit: Fashion Nova Designed on Adobe Illustrator
Photo credit: Adobe Stock Designed on Adobe Illustrator
Photo credit: Adobe Stock Designed on: Adobe Illustrator
Defining Visual Identity
How do you stick out in a sea of competitors and contenders?
Princeton University did a study where they observed people judging other human's likability, trustworthiness, competence, attractiveness, and aggressiveness by their faces.
One of the conclusions of this study? The average person takes about .01 of a second to form their judgments.
Leonard Kim, a professor at Princeton said, "With that reaction time, you need a clean and crisp visual representation of your brand. Otherwise, people may associate your brand with being cheap, unreliable, or even untrustworthy.” You have one shot to have a great first impression. Don't miss your shot.
If you find yourself asking, 'What exactly is a visual identity? And how do you create one?', keep reading.
Part of building your brand is turning the traits and attributes of your business into visual content that aligns with your business. “A visual identity should amplify the intended message of the brand so you want to learn more and follow along with the story. Then the story should sell customers into why they should do business with your brand,” Kim at Princeton University said.
At the core of visual identity are your visual branding ingredients: logo, colors, type, and imagery. However, before designing a logo, you need to have identified the colors, type, and imagery.
A logo is a huge part of visual brand identity. It is a graphic or illustration that conveys what you do. A logo can be a combination of your color palette, type, and design. You have to identify your color, type & vibe you want to give off before you design a logo.
Color
“Your color palette needs to fit what you are trying to convey,” Kim said. “If you’re promoting a luxury product, you may want to use blacks, golds, and silvers. If you have a financial product, you may want to incorporate greens and golds.”
Credit to ColorPsychology.org
Color psychology is REAL, ya'll! My best tip in regards to picking colors for brand identification (or even content) would have to be: pick one main color and then see what other colors in similar ranges look like with your main color.
Learn more about color psychology by clicking here.
Need some inspiration in regards to color schemes? Click here.
Type
Beyond what the words in your logo say, the size, typeface, and hierarchy of your text are directly related to your visual identity. Using the same 1-2 typefaces will also help reinforce brand identity when posting content online. Keep this in mind as you establish what your visual identity will be.
Imagery
You know the saying, ‘A picture is worth 1,000 words.’? This still rings true in this case. Photos inspire, remind and trigger emotions within. The right imagery will set the tone for the entire deliverable or idea. This is why it’s important to put photos of what inspires you on a mood board. Knowing the imagery that inspires you is a step closer to understanding what type of illustration or vibe you want your logo to have.
Have you established the basics of your identity? Then you are ready to create a mood board.
Mood boards are a vital staple in a brand, goal, or event. After the identity is established, a mood board is used to reference when you or others are designing marketing materials, ads, social media, or other content in the future. Referencing your mood board will always ensure that the content you make is on-brand and consistent matter what.
Another thing that mood boards are great for? Chasing your goals!! Putting a mood board on a fridge or bathroom mirror, etc. is a great way to keep your eye on the prize.
Check out some of my more recent mood boards!
Nina Kay Digital x Moon Child Events
Nina Kay Digital x Whatnot Boutique
Nina Kay Digital x Dave & Lindsay’s Wedding Mood Board