On Monday, the Interns for the first session of the World Traveler Internship were announced. Congrats to Amma Boakye and Matt Hardy ! We look forward to following you around Europe!
Launch! Ford Canada Drives New Blog
May 7 2012
It was only a few short months ago that I picked up the phone at RD2 and met Ammar Khan of Ford Canada for the very first time. He was contacting us because he wanted to create the best blog imaginable for Ford Canada. Ammar held BlogSouthwest.com in high regard and asked a lot of questions about our process for working with the team at Southwest Airlines to build such a stable community platform. My reply to Ammar, “It’s been a journey, and a very rewarding one.” His reply, “We’ll need to go through that journey in weeks, rather than months.” more…
The Three Second Rule
Apr 21 2012
Engaging your audience online is increasingly challenging. Today when your brand wishes to create a web property you are automatically competing with expectations. Your audience spends hours a month on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to name a few. It’s imperative that we are competing like crazy for their eyeballs on your website.
You have only three seconds to establish an emotional impression from the instant your page loads to the browser. During that first three seconds your audience will formulate a decision as to whether or not they will invest in the next three seconds.
Within those first three seconds, the user will not begin reading or clicking. They are simply responding to design. They take in color, type treatment, layout design, and thematic messaging. It is within this amount of time where they decide, emotionally, if they like you or not. If not, they move to the next thing and you may never be seen again. If they like you, within those first three seconds, then congratulations because you have just earned the next three seconds. It is here that we move from establishing an emotional affinity to where the user is formulating a plan. Brain likes emotional response, therefore brain tells hand to move mouse and prepare to click.
Your website is possibly the first impression that is made to your audience. If it’s not the first impression then it’s likely to be the second impression. Does your website have three second staying power?
Innovation at the push of a button
Apr 6 2012
RD2 has been fortunate enough to have had a long working history with Dell. Over the years we have been able to forge solid working relationships with many people there and in some cases, turned them into great personal friendships. It has been through the ongoing exercise of trust and delivery that we have been able to push the envelope for Dell and help prove to ourselves we can do it.
Dell approached RD2 with a new concept. It was called vStart. A new approach to the whole ‘cloud’ and ‘virtualization’ craze. What Dell created was a fantastic new idea that was shocking it hadn’t been done yet. Create an all-in-one, ready-to-go, plug-n-play, you’re-off-to-the-races cloud based virtualization package for companies that aren’t quite ready to step up to a full-on Enterprise level virtualization solution. more…
Third time is a charm
Apr 5 2012
Today we launched the 2012 STA Travel World Traveler Internship website! It’s hard to believe this is now our third year working with STA Travel on one of their biggest campaigns of the year. As always, we’ve enjoyed working with STA Travel on creating a new design for the website and launching the program.
This year, STA Travel has decided to “up the ante” and send two sets of lucky interns on three trips over the year. The first trip kicks off May 28 in Berlin and the interns will travel to Prague, Vienna, Munich, Venice, Rome, Florence, Nice, Lucerne, Barcelona, and Madrid! more…
BenSpies.com – A Social Media Home Base for MotoGP Celebrity
Apr 3 2012
Yesterday we launched a very strategic part of the puzzle for Ben Spies. As we recently blogged about the importance of web properties you own vs properties you rent, we launched the official website for Ben to kick off his 2012 season. I’ll let the team expand on this story in future posts. In short, we love working with Ben and Mary Spies. They get it.
The sport of MotoGP is one they are taking head on, living in various countries through the season. Now it’s time for Ben to think of the Ben Brand. He’s an international celebrity. And if you met him in person, spent any time with him, or went on a bicycle ride with him, you would realize he is really just a human being. Of course we think he is special. But the fact that he is a human, doing inhuman things, is what makes him so interesting to follow. more…
Tweetbot: App of the Week
Mar 23 2012
One of the key rented properties for any social media strategy is Twitter. A thing I find really neat about Twitter, some may disagree, is that each post is limited to 140 characters. No more, less is acceptable. One might assume that there wouldn’t be too much effort devoted to the interface from which we tweet, seeing as there’s only at most 140 characters going out. It’s an interesting thing though…There is so much focus placed on the way we interact with the service that it seems the applications and their interfaces are equally as important as Twitter itself when the experience is viewed as a whole. It can make it or break it. Tweetbot does the former, in spades. more…
Some You Own, Some You Rent
Mar 22 2012
Let’s say you are responsible for running communications for a small, medium, or large company. And, you’re in the situation where you are pondering how to get started in this social media thing. How to become part of the conversation and to channel conversations within and around your brand in a new space. You know you need to be there, and you know it’s something that’s right for your brand. Maybe you already have the support from your peers and the executive team. And, maybe there are already conversations happening that you wish you could have been part of from a brand point of view … to represent your company in a professional manner and to have contributed in some positive way to the lives and interests of those having the conversation. more…