Inspiring Design Trends for 2022

by Keely | in Graphic Design, Marketing | on 01 Feb 2022

As we welcome 2022, we say goodbye to 2021 – a year that had the ongoing pandemic, the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and continuing our best efforts to combat the climate crisis with 77 countries in the world announcing full or partial bans on plastic bags.*

Trends in the design world are more than just random fads, they express a year’s worth of phenomenon, and these events have changed the way businesses in all sectors around the world communicate with their consumers.

So what are these trends? We’ve highlighted 8 below:

1. Happiness is key

The past couple of years have certainly made people revaluate their priorities and recognise what is most important, so I feel this had to go first on the list. Mental health is such a huge part of our lives, now more than ever, and it’s come to realise that the ‘bigger is better’ mindset is not always the case. This outlook will inspire a tone of voice that’s happier and more carefree throughout the year, to help bring more comfort and positivity.

(atelier-bingo)

2. Maximalism

‘Go big or go home’ is what applies to Maximalist design! Say goodbye to that white space and be extravagant with colour and pattern edge to edge of the artboard, having no fear of clashing combinations. This style creates so much energy and freedom, which you could say is like a burst of expression through the restrictions after lockdown.

3. Bold backgrounds

Bold and vibrant colours are set to take over from the more muted style of colour that’s been popular over the past couple of years. Bright block colours are certainly a way to make visuals stand out – as long as it’s done right and doesn’t take over the main focus of the page. The aim of these backgrounds isn’t to overwhelm text and icons, but to make the right information stand out, so it’s important to use them in bursts paired with white space or more muted tones.

4. Colourful visuals that are inclusive

Similarly to the bright backgrounds mentioned above, icons and illustrations are heading towards this same style. These visuals portray a message at just a glance, and capture the reader’s attention over any piece of text, with most icons representing the same thing in any language – meaning they’re a great way to get your point across and communicate. Making all visuals inclusive is also a big trend of 2022, displaying the diversity of humanity respects and appreciates what makes everyone different, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability and sexual orientation.

5. Serif Fonts

Sans-serif fonts are widely used in design as they portray a style that’s more modern and approachable. Last year however, Serif fonts started to come back and it seems are here to stay in 2022. These classic serif fonts can look outdated if they’re not used in the right way, but they are however, traditionally used in books and news articles and are seen to represent trust and reliability – so it’s no wonder they are a popular choice with banking brands. There are now so many different serif typefaces in all different styles and personalities, and paired with a nice sans-serif font they can look really effective – such as how Nationwide have utilised this on their website.

6. Nostalgia – retro is new again

With all the unknowns and unfamiliarity in the world at the moment, people are in need of comfort, enjoyment and maybe a bit of escapism – so what’s better than throwing everything back to the 90s! Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ bought back the nostalgic 80s vibe, capturing the era of loud patterns and neon colours, and similarly the 90s style brings back a sense of familiarity and happiness, with the bright colours and funky shapes. MailChimp have captured this style perfectly on their website, aiding their text with nostalgic and fun visuals – and using a serif font I may add!

7. Motion

Motion within branding has been a trend for the last couple of years and continues to be a vital focus for brand creation. Adding movement and animation not only outlines the personality of a brand, whether it’s on social media or on your landing page, it creates much more engaging content, making a brand much more memorable.

8. Responsive logos

It’s a known thing to designers, that many clients wanted to ‘make the logo bigger’, however bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better – what’s most important is that the logo is always visible. With content being viewed on such a range of devices and responding to many screen sizes, it’s important that the logo adapts to still be identifiable on the largest screen and the smallest screen. Whether it’s using an icon to distinguish the brand – like Kodak have created, or abbreviating the name – like we have done for The Niche Vehicle Network, the brand is still recognised at each state.

As mentioned earlier on, the events from previous years have changed the way businesses in all sectors around the world communicate with their consumers, and looking through all these trends and their examples above, we can see a crossover with many companies already within their styles.

We hope this year brings more positivity, and the upcoming design trends look to reflect this with more visual aspects; from more inclusive representations to nostalgic and vibrant bold colours, inspiring well-being and happiness.

References:

*The 12 Best Things That Have Happened in 2021 So Far — and How We Can Keep Making Progress (globalcitizen.org)

27 Jan
2022

Top 5 Social Trend Predictions for 2022

by Charlie Jones | in Social Media | on 27 Jan 2022

Following on from our last blog – Social Media in 2021, we wanted to have a look at what social trends are predicted for the next 12 months.

Here are our top five social trend predictions for 2022.

TikTok

We may as well start with TikTok, as it seems to be the most common answer when researching social trends for 2022.

As mentioned before, TikTok’s rise in popularity just keeps on growing and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. In fact the short-form video platform is setting the trend for other social platforms, forcing them to create new features (such as Instagram Reels) that are similar to TikTok’s own.

What may have started out as a social platform for general entertainment use, is now used by a wide audience, including businesses in a variety of industries.

Plus, with so many editing tools, TikTok is a great way for a business to get creative and experiment in using video as part of their content creation.

Video

Video content for socials has been on the rise over the last couple of years, but with TikTok being so popular, videos are now THE go-to when people are scrolling through platforms.

Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, or any other of the big social media channels, they are all developing their features to include both long form and short form videos.

Creating a video that is 15-60 seconds long, could generate way more engagement than a standalone image.

Your video content doesn’t need to be all bells and whistles or recorded on a super fancy camera either! A simple video recorded on a mobile phone device can actually come across as more ‘personable’ and ‘relatable’ to your audience.

Bite-sized Content

We live in a world where everything has become overcrowded, and that includes our social platforms. With so many connections to different people and organisations, it can be hard to not only grab someone’s attention whilst they’re scrolling, but to keep the attention too!

That’s why bite-sized content is becoming another main focus for social content.

No one seems to have the time to read long blog posts anymore (if you’ve made it this far in the blog, bravo!). Audiences want to know what the information is and they want it there and then.

We’re not saying to cut out the long form content such as news and blogs but making quick and easy to read content is what will grab an audience’s attention on social media.

Inclusion & Diversity

Making social content inclusive is a must for 2022.

The social world is full of audiences of different ages, races, gender, religion and so on, and there is no ‘one box fits all’.

As humans, we need to appreciate and respect the diversity of others and do so by creating content that is inclusive.

However, being diverse and inclusive doesn’t mean jumping on a trending hashtag. Inclusion and diversion need to be a part of your business’ ethics and strategy – including your social strategy. Don’t just ‘talk the talk’, show your audience a commitment and the actions your organisation is taking.

Influencing & Collaborating

If a child told you 10years ago they wanted to be a social influencer when they grew up, you’d have probably laughed and thought it was a ‘silly’ job. Roll on 2022 and there are now millions of successful influencers all over social media (probably including that child from 10years ago!).

Influencers have changed the shape of social media and have forced brands and marketing teams to change their ways of promoting.

Most successful influencers have a niche, whether that be fashion, travel, food, or fitness, and the brands/products they share to their socials are seen by vast audiences.

But it isn’t all about the number of followers. It’s important to pick the right candidate for the item/experience being promoted. If a brand decides to collaborate with an influencer, concentrate on their voice and morals rather than how many people follow them.

To Conclude

There is a lot to come for 2022 in the world of social, and these are just some of our predictions for now! We’ll take another review in 6 months time to see just how our predictions played out, and what other trends may be on the horizon for the second half of the year.

If you would like a hand in building a social strategy, and/or would like someone else to take the reins in your social media management, drop us an email! We have supported numerous businesses over the years with their social content, helping them to grow their social presence whilst developing their strategy over time, following the trends of online content.

18 Jan
2022

Social Media in 2021

by Keely | in News, Social Media | on 18 Jan 2022

There are now 4.55 billion people around the world who use social media, with 400 million of those having joined social media platforms within the last 12 months!

Social networks are constantly evolving and growing in popularity with different demographics, so we decided to look at how 2021 played its part in the world of social.

Top 5 Most Popular Social Networks (in Millions)

Facebook 2,895
Youtube 2,291
WhatsApp 2,000
Instagram 1,393
FB Messenger 1,300

Facebook takes the top spot in being the world’s most popular social network as of 2021* (but we aren’t completely shocked by that are we!) with the world’s most famous video platform – Youtube, following in at number 2. Facebook, or Meta should we say, also own WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, who likewise appear in the top 5 most popular social networks in the world.

Why People Use Social Media

According to data*, the main reason people use social media is to keep in touch with family and friends, but a high percentage of people also admit to using social media just to kill time (the perfect opportunity to grab your audience with social marketing!).

Some other reasons included:
Reading news stories
Finding funny/entertaining content
Trending topics
Finding Inspo
Searching for products to buy
Sharing and discussing opinions

Among these main reasons, over 20% of people reported that they use social media to follow celebrities and influencers.

Where to Find the Latest News

Social media channels of course!
In a survey* taken in July 2021, respondents were asked how they access news content. A whopping 82% of them said they mainly found out news from online media, including social platforms, with television coming out at 64%.

What Major Changes took Place in 2021

Short-form video has pretty much taken over social in the last 12 months, with all the big platforms making changes and updating their apps to follow suit.

Some other big words you may have come across last year, especially in the last 6 months, are ‘metaverse’ ‘NFT’ and ‘Web3’. Not everyone is jumping on board with these yet, but they are certainly something to keep an eye on in 2022 (we’ll talk more about this soon! Watch this space).

E-commerce, through the use of social networks is on the rise! With so many influencers now promoting products, it’s no surprise that platforms are now introducing shoppable features.

So, what have some of the social platforms done to keep up with these up-and-coming trends? And what other major things happened in 2021?

TikTok

If you hadn’t heard of TikTok in 2020 then we are sure you heard of it in 2021. TikTok became a huge hit during 2020 when Covid-19 had everyone cooped up at home, and since then has continued to reign as one of the fastest growing social networks.

Known as the king of short-form video, TikTok has influenced some of the biggest trends across other platforms.

As the network continues to grow, and with the additional long form video and ads feature to help boost content, people predict more and more users will use the video-sharing app to influence consumer purchasing.

Facebook

As mentioned in the Top 5 Most Popular Social Networks, Facebook changed their name in 2021 to ‘Meta’, as they begin their journey into building their own metaverse.

Facebook also seen the success of short-form video across the web, and therefore introduced Facebook Reels.

Although it may be the most popular social platform in the world, Facebook had a data breach in 2021 which leaked millions of user records onto the dark web*.

The breach included phone numbers, names, locations, and email addresses of over 500 million users across 106 countries.

Although Facebook said the data had been scraped in 2019, the leaked data could still prove valuable to cybercriminals*.

Twitter

It was a year of successes and not so successful features for Twitter in 2021. Towards the end of 2020, the platform tried to introduce it’s own short-form video feature called ‘Fleets’, similar to the ‘Stories’ feature on Facebook and Instagram. However, it was unsuccessful and was removed from Twitter in August 2021.

There were some features that did take off on Twitter though:

Spaces – Spaces allows users worldwide to join in with live conversations from creators. The feature concentrates on the use of audio content, which also leads onto Twitter’s other new feature…
Voice Tweets – This could be the feature a lot of people have been waiting for! No more having to worry about character count, you can literally and physically just SAY what you’d like to tweet.

Likewise to Twitter, LinkedIn didn’t have much success with their ‘Stories’ feature, so was removed from the platform a year after its introduction.

They did however, introduce ‘Boosting’. This allows its users to boost organic posts to try and achieve greater engagement using a chosen budget.

YouTube

Having seen TikTok’s achievement in short-form video, YouTube (pretty much the over-all king of online video), developed their YouTube Shorts – videos that are 15 seconds or less and can be uploaded to YouTube instantly. Will it take over TikTok? We’re not sure, but we’ll soon see throughout 2022!
‘Video Chapters’ has been another development in the platform, helping an audience to skip to certain sections of a video, without having to fast-forward or rewind a whole video to find a certain video clip.
Influencers are a huge part of social media now, promoting products and brands within their content. With this in mind, YouTube have introduced Live Shopping as a part of its e-commerce shopping experiences.

To Conclude

Every year, social media gets bigger and bigger, and won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

With a forever changing landscape and multiple up-and-coming trends, platforms are constantly developing to keep up with the times and compete against each other to be the most used platform online.

Now here’s to 2022 on social…

*Research/data taken from the following sources
 https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
 https://www.statista.com/statistics/715449/social-media-usage-reasons-worldwide/
 https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/
 https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/12/10/2022-social-media-predictions-tiktok-nfts-commerce-meaningful-engagement
 https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-2021-facebook-data-breach/
https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4?r=US&IR=T

21 Apr
2021

AI in Marketing

by Keely | in Industry, Marketing | on 21 Apr 2021

Artificial Intelligence is transforming the world around us every day, with all industries developing new innovations to change the way they work. It has been a massive buzzword over the past few years, and it seems that nowadays we can’t be without it. But how is it changing the marketing industry in particular?

What is Artificial Intelligence?

First, we need to define what we mean by AI; by now everyone’s got their own definition, but IBM provides a comprehensive one:

“artificial intelligence refers to the ability of a computer or machine to mimic the capabilities of the human mind—learning from examples and experience, recognizing objects, understanding and responding to language, making decisions, solving problems—and combining these and other capabilities to perform functions a human might perform, such as greeting a hotel guest or driving a car.”

So, it’s easy to see why some people are terrified of AI ‘taking everyone’s jobs.’ AI does have the capability of automating all manner of tasks conventionally part of many roles, but this does not mean that people will be redundant. In fact, it will allow individual to focus on more intensive activities, while leaving the tedious tasks to an AI system. There is no doubt a lot of these in marketing. AI systems also have the capability of processing an incredible amount of data, producing tangible outputs that marketeers can then use to generate leads. So, what are the specific ways that AI is being used today in marketing?

Advertising

With the right data, AI-powered ad tools can detect patterns at scale in your advertising data, then predict what changes to campaigns will improve performance against a specific KPI. This can all happen in seconds, rather than the hours, days, or weeks it might take a human to analyse, test, and iterate across campaigns. This allows you to increase your return on ad spend and reduce the amount of money you spend on staff time and ineffective ad budget.

Copywriting

AI has the potential to both curate and generate content, then get the right people to see it on the right platforms. At the moment this is limited in range, but in the near future AI could develop initial drafts of content based on certain restraints

Personalised recommendations

Intelligent algorithms can help personalise a user’s website experience – By analysing hundreds of data points including location, demographics, device, interaction with the website, etc., AI can display the best-fitting offers and content

Chat bots

Compared with manual customer service, AI chatbots have many advantages, allowing businesses to go beyond the traditional “one- to-one” form of customer service to support to a number of customers at the same time and in different time zones. Of course, AI chatbots don’t need to rest, so they can answer customer queries around the clock and in real time. This makes them both highly efficient and able to provide support outside of office hours, improving customer experience.

It does have to be said though that just because a system uses AI doesn’t mean it’s accurate. AI outputs are only as good as the inputs into the system. If the data it is given is inaccurate, not fit for purpose or too sparse, the system cannot be expected to give good results. Nevertheless, it is an exciting field and worth the hype!

25 Mar
2021

Improving engagement with your LinkedIn content

by Keely | in Marketing, Social Media | on 25 Mar 2021

Your LinkedIn feed is probably packed full of insights from companies and people, and it can seem like a mystery as to how some content gets to appear at the top of your feed. Meanwhile your carefully crafted content never seems to get any engagement. While there is no silver bullet to perfect engagement, there are some methods you can use to increase the chances of your content getting seen:

Publish content within LinkedIn

The LinkedIn algorithm favours content that keeps users on the platform over content that sends them elsewhere. So, add videos using LinkedIn’s native video uploader rather than YouTube for example and publish articles within LinkedIn rather than linking out to an external blog.

Use captions

Most people will be watching videos with volume low or turned off, so it is important that they are able to still understand what is being said.

Publish both posts and articles

A post view can just be someone scrolling their feed and not looking at the post, whereas people have to physically click a link to view an article. This is a greater indicator of active engagement.

Track comments

Comments, rather than views, are a better indicator of the success of your content as this shows that people are actively engaging with your content rather than scrolling past it.

Utilise text-only posts

Text-only posts have been found to outperform every other content format, so it would be useful to prioritise these in your content plan. Also making text-only posts visually appealing – by adding emojis and bullet points, for example – increases engagement

Use hashtags

The more you use hashtags on a LinkedIn post, the better it categorises content and highlights relevant posts to each user. This will increase your reach and ensure that your posts are being seen by the right people
You can also pin hashtags related to your industry to see the latest updates on your newsfeed. This will allow you to connect and engage with others in the industry.

Encourage early engagement

If no one reacts to your posts within the 60 minutes of posting, then the chances are it won’t perform well. Try to get 20 reactions or comments in the first hour of a post’s life by encouraging employees to engage with the content as soon as it is published. You also need to make sure to reply to any comments on your post swiftly, as this engagement all contributes to the velocity of the post overall.

The best time to post

A bit of experimentation is always required to find the best engagement time as no one business will have exactly the same client base/demographic. Having said that, we can make an educated guess as to when there may be more traffic:

Working hours

As LinkedIn is a professional network, its users tend to browse their feeds during the prime working hours of 9am to 5pm. So, it’s best to post during these hours especially in the morning, as people are more likely to have time to log on before getting stuck into their daily tasks.

Commuting hours

In the same vein, another potential target is commuting time – 8am-9am and 5pm-6pm. As people are getting ready or winding down many will scroll their LinkedIn feed to stay on top of industry updates.

As you can probably imagine then, there tends to be less engagement with posts on the weekend and evenings. It is also probably better to avoid posting on a Monday too, as people tend to be too busy catching up from the weekend to have time to spare on social media.

Remember that these are only guidelines – depending on your business you may find that your post engagement bucks these trends entirely! But they are a good starting point to go from.

03 Mar
2021

A Practical Approach to ROI in Social Media

by Keely | in Marketing | on 03 Mar 2021

A strong social media presence can be a good way of generating business, but is there a way to clearly track how our hours spent cultivating the perfect content translate into new leads?

ROI means ‘return on investment’. Social media ROI represents the return on investment from your organisation’s social media activities. Historically it’s been a difficult thing to track and prove, especially since a lot of social media return is based on personal relationships and is long-term. Broadly speaking to calculate your ROI, you divide the overall value by the investment and times by 100.

Sounds easy enough, but how exactly can you figure out a total monetary figure for both your personal value and investment? Let’s take a look at what each of them can entail.

Value

What defines value will be different depending on your goals. These can include:

New followers
Link clicks
Online purchase
Contact form submission
Signups for newsletter
Downloads
Time spent on a particular webpage

Once you have a goal, there are a lot of tools you can use to track different forms of value:

Social Media Built-In Platform Analytics Tools
- Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all have tools that you can use to track likes, retweets, shares, new page follows over time and overall reach.
Google Analytics
- This is a free powerful source to get clear figures on form submissions, traffic, page views and conversion rates

These tools can help to give you additional metrics such as:

Average sale price
Lifetime value per customer
- This can then be used with the data to establish a monetary value i.e. if you can see that 1 in 10 people that view your blog post becomes a customer and your average lifetime value per customer is £100, then the value of someone viewing the post is £10.

To take a full value example, if your goal is to get more online purchases, then your main value metric will come from the number of purchases made as a result of clicking on a post link. If you see that half of clicks result in a sale, and the average sale price per customer is £5, then each post view is worth £2.50 in value. BUT that doesn’t factor in the very human element of social media, that of making a personal connection. The blog post that you write may not directly convert into a sale, but someone may remember your name as a result and months later could act or recommend you to someone else.

So, it can easily become quite tricky to track an exact figure. This is why it’s important to always think long-term with social media ROI. ‘Untrackable’ data such as the previous example can be gathered through customer feedback surveys and social media polls. You can also use your previous experience to estimate a figure for a certain value.

Using a combination of all of these methods will allow you to capture whether you are hitting your goals and will also highlight any additional value that your social media efforts can bring.

Investment

Investment is an easier thing to quantify, simply tracking and adding hours spent on social media then multiplying them by an hourly rate to get a clear figure. Activities can include:

Cost of tools
Paid advertisements
Planning and content creation

Once you have your figures, you can divide the value by the investment to see a clear ROI figure. This may seem complicated, and it is! But by regularly tracking your social media strategy in this way you can tailor your approach to what works!

Coming Soon

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26 Feb
2021

The importance of text hierarchy

by Keely | in Graphic Design, Marketing, Uncategorised | on 26 Feb 2021

Typographic hierarchy is a system for organising text, which allows the reader to immediately understand the order of importance of what’s to be read. This is important in any design, as the easier the piece is to read visually, the more likely it is to be read and to keep your audience engaged.

The text hierarchy system applies to near enough everything, from print assets – letterheads, business cards and flyers, to web design – where navigation and call to actions need to be as clear as possible for the best user experience.

3 steps to consider going about this

To begin with, it’s essential to recognise what message the text is trying to convey. The branding and aesthetics will come after, but to start with it’s important to find the purpose and meaning.
Content should be treated as a visual component – along with shapes, icons, colour, typography etc. If colour is used to differentiate rank, think about the psychology and the meaning of that colour – red for example portrays danger or caution, and similarly in terms of type, text that’s in bold all caps can sometimes give off that same message.
Put yourself in the reader’s position and try to see things how they would at first glance. Are each of the sections clear and contrasting enough to show a hierarchy of importance? The article page from one of our newsletter designs below displays the 3 main levels:

Heading

The heading or title is the first thing the reader sees when glancing through content. This is of the highest importance as if it’s not engaging enough or not visually striking, the reader may flick past and never even get to the main content.

Subheading

Next down the hierarchy are the Subheadings, and these are used to separate the text into sections. This text should be less eyecatching than the header, but more visual than the text body, as this is a summary of the main content within it.

Body

Finally we come to the body text, this section is more content heavy and includes all the meaty information, so it’s crucial that it’s easy to read to ensure the reader continues all the way through to the end.

With and without a designed hierarchy

We love comedy here at PDC, myself in particular loves going to see stand-up comedians – although a bit difficult in these times! Using this sector as an example, I wanted to show how the way a listings page is displayed can impact the readability.

Eye-tracking research by the Missouri University of Science and Technology shows that when looking at a website, it takes users less than two-tenths of a second to form a first impression, spending around 2.6 seconds scanning a website before focusing on a specific area. This doesn’t surprise me at all, as personally if I don’t see what I want to see straight away I just won’t bother to look.

Imagine trying to find someone specific if this were a list of hundreds of comedians:

It’s a little extreme, but as you can see, without any system of hierarchy it’s actually quite painful to sift through the text to find what you’re looking for.

However as you can see below, by using colour and varying type size and weights, it’s easier to isolate certain sections to make it much more readable and scannable:

And to make it even clearer than that as well as being a bit more visual, the use of icons can also help:

Overall, there are many styling techniques that can be used to create a textual hierarchy; size, weight, colour, position, type contrast, and a lot of the time these techniques are used in combination with each other.

Understand the purpose of the text and what message it is trying to get across, decipher what is the most important content, and then present this content in the most organised way. Remove the clutter and design a clear and readable piece for your audience – less is more!

19 Jan
2021

PDC’s useful stretches while working from home

by Keely | in Marketing | on 19 Jan 2021

Studies show that regular stretching can help reduce neck and shoulder pain. Plus, regular breaks to stand and stretch increase productivity, allowing your eyes to rest and your entire body to feel more comfortable. With such big benefits, this should be something that all of us working from home should do. Here at PDC we’ve written a list of stretches that you can do with just the space behind your desk. Give them a go and let us know how you get on!

Ideally every hour of your working day, make a point to stop and hold each of these stretches for just 15 seconds each. You will soon notice that your muscles are less tight, and you are more productive when you do sit back down!

Neck

Keep your head upright.
Gently turn your head from side to side.
As you turn your head, try to move it past your shoulder.

You should feel the muscles on the outside of your neck gradually stretching.

Forearms

Extend one arm out with your elbow straight.
Use the other hand to grasp it at the side of the thumb and bend the wrist downward.
Repeat on the other side

Chest

In a seated or standing position, take the arms behind you and try to lace your fingers together.
Straighten the arms and gently lift your hands up a few inches until you feel a stretch in your chest.

Back

Sit up straight and touch your fingertips to your shoulders with your elbows pointed out to the side.
Keeping your fingers in place, exhale and slowly pull your elbows together in front of you until they touch.
Breathe in and allow your arms to move to their original position.

Shoulders

Bring your left arm across the front of your body at about chest height.
Support your left arm with the elbow crease of your right arm or use your right hand to hold your left arm.
Continue to face forwards, and apply gentle pressure on the left arm with your right until you feel a stretch.
Repeat on the opposite side.

Ankles/Calves

Keep your right leg forwards and foot flat on the floor while extending your left leg straight back, placing your heel flat on the floor.
Keep the back leg straight, and lean forwards until you can feel a stretch in the calf of the straight leg
Repeat on the other side

Hips/Glutes

Sit with both legs planted on the floor.
Raise one leg and rest the foot on the opposite knee
Push your knee down gently and lean forwards until the stretch is felt along the crossed leg and glute

Give it a go, tag us and use the hashtag #stretchitout to be featured on our stories!

Coming Soon

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06 Jan
2021

New Year, New Trends – What are the Key Internet Marketing Trends for 2021?

by Keely | in Digital, Industry, Marketing, Social Media | on 06 Jan 2021

2020 was the year that businesses, small and large, all over the world were forced to change their ways on how they operate, with many products and services moving to online platforms and employees continuing to work remotely as a result of the global pandemic.

In addition to this, lockdowns and isolation periods have also caused a change in customer behaviour, meaning all the necessary changes to digital marketing will continue to change and evolve throughout this year.

So, what are these changes to internet marketing and what is it that we need to look out for in order to engage new customers as well as to keep hold of existing ones? We’ve outlined 5 areas below:

1. Social Media Marketing

The pandemic has resulted in people spending more time online than ever before, so in order to keep earning a profit, it’s crucial that you commit to your social media marketing resources.

As we keep coming in and out of lockdowns, physically going to a shop to browse or buy is getting more difficult, especially when non-essential shops have to close. Many people don’t want to leave the house at all or unless absolutely necessary, resulting in the increased use of online platforms instead. This is where having a strong social media presence is necessary to reach your target audience, as well as ensuring that your company brand and products/services are getting noticed and then shared around by users and potential buyers.

2. Interactive Content

To get a higher rate of engagement in your social posts and/or website, you will need to increase the interactivity of your content. This is a good way to get your audience’s attention and engage with them, as well as showing that your business is up to date.

A few good ways to do this is by live sessions, surveys, asking questions and holding polls & quizzes. Another idea is to offer giveaways and create competitions to get people talking and sharing. A few prizes won’t break the bank, especially when it’s a great opportunity to build up the number of followers and potential customers.

3. Ensure your Business Information and Local SEO is Correct

One of the most essential things for small businesses is to ensure your company details and local listings are up to date and established across all platforms and search engines.

‘Google My Business’ listing is quite useful in giving valuable information about your company. Say you own a café for example, if someone is walking around a town and searches for café’s nearby, you will display on the search if your information is up to date – and obviously you would want the right contact details to be visible if they were to contact with any questions.

With this in mind, ensure that your local listings have a specific area to make sure your business is picked up and found in the ‘near me’ search, as well as keeping finer details up to date such as opening hours – you don’t want to be closed when you state to be open.

4. An increase in Voice Searching

Now that many people are using voice assistants like Siri and Alexa etc, it means that it’s not just text searches that your content needs to be optimised to.

With this in mind, you need to ensure that your content is available in both voice and textual cases, meaning a change in the types of keywords you use in your content. For example, when people speak to Alexa, they mainly use words like “why” and “how” in order to receive the answer they are looking for, so if your tone is more conversation-like, you are much more likely to be shown in voice searches.

5. Using Messaging Apps for Marketing

Messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are now two of the main platforms that this generation uses to engage with friends and family. However, with the ever-changing times there’s now huge potential for business as well, with Facebook continuously developing new features in this area, there’s a great opportunity to engage with a huge audience of where there is now over a billion users on both the above platforms alone.

Although Messaging apps are a huge part of communication, you still can’t be without the trusty email marketing platforms, which is also going to be a big part of 2021 as these instant messaging platforms are where people are most active day to day. And on the topic of instant messaging, live chat options are very popular for any questions from an extensive audience, so incorporating something similar using one of the common platforms could be a good option for your business.

All in all, digital marketing has no fixed approach or eternal rule book to abide by as it’s ever changing with the world around us, so all we can do is focus on our goals and follow the current trends where appropriate.

SEO and interactive content that gives informative and beneficial information to your market is crucial for engagement and maintaining your existing audience.

Dedication to your social media marketing resources and creating your own individual content by your distinctive brand will help to make a difference to your online presence.

We hope that 2021 is a better year for all!

(Images: undraw.co)

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18 Sep
2020

6 Benefits of Using Images, Flat Graphics and Infographics on Your Website and Social Media

by Keely | in Graphic Design, Marketing, Social Media | on 18 Sep 2020

Why are images and graphics so important on websites, blogs and social media? One of the main reasons is readability.There’s nothing worse than landing on a page and there just being pages and pages of text, it puts people off as it’s too overwhelming to look at. However, adding visual assets to these types of pages allows it to be broken up into sections, making it so much easier for the reader to digest the information.

An image can tell a thousand words. Sometimes an image can tell you about the information much quicker than reading a headline, as well as being much more interesting to look at. So, incorporating some of the text-heavy content into an infographic, is much more aesthetically pleasing for the reader, meaning they are more likely to read it and absorb what’s being said.

Images can rank in Google search engines, as long as the images are significant, optimised and not a highly popular subject that’s being written about.
A good example of this, is if you sell niche products on your website where there’s not much competition on the market, you should use the specific model/product name as a keyword, and this could become a good source of traffic.

Stand out on social media. Everyone knows that images play a massive role on social platforms, not everyone searches for images on Google, but on social media you see things without even looking for them. When you come across a topic you’re interested in, or just a funny image you are likely to click on it, so depending on your topic, this can help you to get more views on your post content.

Following on from the step above, these images that stand out to the reader are more likely to be shared, and therefore your content is spread out to be seen by a wider audience. Obviously presuming that the content is of value and is a topic people have interest in.

Visual branding becomes your signature, this helps people to identify you easily, when they are used to seeing the same colours, graphics and styles repeated throughout your posts and content. As previously mentioned, an image sometimes does a better job of explaining something, so using things like character graphics is a good way to amplify your brand and make it much more visual and memorable.

With stock photos and free images sites (pexels.com, unsplash.com) now so available to us, creating blogs etc has never been easier.

The downside to this, is that because they are so freely available and easy to access, it means that a lot of people can be using the same images across their platforms – a bit like shopping at a high street store and then seeing everyone wearing the new top you just bought, it’s annoying!

This is why it’s important to be original and stand out amongst the rest. Using a mixture of imagery and graphics is a good option, as if you don’t have access to original photos like a lot of people don’t, you can bring out your identity and originality in graphics and infographics. Here at PDC, we can work with you to create your own brand and individuality that’s suited to your style of work. Contact us today to see how we can help you.

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