Socialbout Media

11/08/2024

Why So Many Designers Struggle with Marketing — And How to Fix It

Focus on Outcomes, Not Features

A design that’s “innovative” and “clean” might mean different things to different designers, but it doesn’t mean much to clients looking for ROI. Clients want to know how your design will make their lives better and more profitable.

Instead of listing features, zero in on outcomes—

Don’t say, “We’ve implemented a beautiful, minimalist UI with intuitive navigation.”

Do say, “With a 20% faster load time and ..."

Let’s be real. The world has plenty of web designers, but not nearly enough who understand marketing. We see it all the time. Gorgeous…

07/29/2024

Having troubles staying updated with plug-ins or trying to find the right theme?

Then Wordpress isn't your solution.

Webflow is.

Wordpress relies on plug-ins like Elementor for themes and a starting point not unique to you, your business, or your brand. That's a recipe for disaster and one even fewer web designers can cook with.

Themes take you away from discovering the best parts about your business and what make you stand out.

Where I'd give Wordpress the edge over Webflow is in e-Commerce. Wordpress hosts some of the busiest websites in the world.

Nowadays, that's not good enough. The world is after personality. There are far too many people adding to the sea of nothingness that is, social media.

With Webflow you can rely on fast performance, skip the plug-in updates, and have a website built for you that's flexible.

Feel like spreading the good word? Consider sharing!

Where is your website hosted? I'm curious to know who's using what and why.

07/27/2024

Watching the Paris Olympics opening ceremony made me think of an old Chinese proverb: “Good rain knows when to fall.”

Only Prince can take a torrential downpour and turn it into a performance of the century.

For the rest of us mortals—rain happens. It’s okay ✨

07/06/2024

“If language is not correct,
then what is said is not what is meant;
If what is said is not what is meant,
Then what out to be done remains undone.”
– Confucius

07/04/2024

Why is it so hard to find ‘your’ platform?

LinkedIn isn’t fun for me.
Instagram is Instagram.
Threads feels genuine.
Facebook still exists?
X isn’t fun for me.
Medium is nice.

Where do y’all hangout online? I need some authenticity in my life.

06/22/2024

“I’m an artist, not a content creator.

There is a huge difference” was the post.

But, here’s the thing..

If you’re an artist, you’re also a leader, understanding and empathetic, an educator, salesman, marketer, etc.

It takes art to get someone to engage.
It takes art to make someone smile.
It takes art to buy the perfect gift.

ART is a way to inspire and motivate others in the world to take action.

ART is challenging to the status quo.

06/19/2024

It's like Tinder, except there will be real humans there.

A mockup inspired by love for dive bars, country music, and hot wings.

The Backwoods Sunset Music Festival.

Intrigued yet? You should be.

View project case study here: https://www.behance.net/waynecalliou1
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06/16/2024

10 Website design mistakes music festivals make, and the solutions to fixing'em.

If you have a festival website, and appreciate low effort effective solutions, check these out. They save: money.

Since a lot of festival mistakes revolve around the same things, here's a short list of those mistakes.
• Bad layouts with cluttered information
• Unreadable fonts with overly "creative" titles and descriptions
• "Set and forget" outsourced and outdated websites
• Use pop-overs or pop-ups like a maniac
• Bad CTAs with no clear call-to-action
• Unsecure websites with no clear plan on taking care of sensitive information

Solutions..
• Better layouts and less information
• Fonts people can read instead of the ones you like
• Hire me on retainer to update your website at 3am
• Pop-ups are sort of lame and hard to use properly
• People need to be told what to do (e.g., "Click this button")
• Ask an AI LLM (ChatGPT, Llama-3, Gemini) how to properly secure your website, or hire a website developer/designer who understands what they're looking at

Creating a website your community and festival attendees can genuinely use is how you build your event or festival's brand long-term. The more corners you cut, the more your audience heads to the comment section.

You don't own your brand anymore, your customers do.
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06/15/2024

Your website is being slow, and it's not converting. Before you give up, try these.
Optimize your images
Double check that your image sizes aren't massive compared to what you relatively need them for (e.g. A 500x500 square and you're using a 2480x3680 original sized image).

WebP formatted images are the most efficient option, but have compatibility issues. I tend to stay with a good sized JPEG.
Minify and compress files
If you're not familiar with coding, this part will be confusing. Although, nowadays an AI LLM could help you within' a few prompts. There are plenty of prompt engineers on Medium right now who are doing incredible things. All you have to do is look.
Use caching
Caching is your friend. If you’ve ever gone to a website, had it load, closed it, and then re-opened it like me only to have it open instantly — that was because of the temporary data stored.

Note: Clearing your cache is not a bad idea at all every once in awhile. I do it once every few months after I've visited quite a few sites, and feel like my laptop's performance is getting bogged down.
Minimizing HTTP requests
Imagine you're ordering food at a restaurant. Instead of asking the waiter to bring you one thing at a time (like "bring me a burger", then "bring me fries", then "bring me a drink"), you can order everything at once ("I want a Royale with cheese").

This way, the waiter only needs to make one trip to your table, instead of three.

In the context of websites, this means combining files and images into fewer requests, making the website load faster and more efficiently. Contact a professional.
Use a CDN
A "Content Delivery Network" (CDN) creates a network of servers across different locations around the world (e.g., New York, Tokyo, London, etc.). When someone visits your website, their browser is directed to the nearest CDN server, which already has a copy of your website’s content ready to rock n’ roll for that user.

What this does is reduce the distance the user request has to travel, making your website load much faster.

If you're not familiar with how to set these up on your website, hire a professional.

I'd teach you, but I'd have to kill you.

06/08/2024

Why is nobody talking about the 10 finalists of the first Miss AI pageant?

When I first learned there was even a thing like this happening, I had mixed feelings. Maybe you do too.

In a society a little weirded out about generative-AI already, now what?

The intrinsic nature behind a beauty pageant was that we took some of the most beautiful humans on the planet, put them into a competition, and watched to see how elegance, poise, and their answers about "World Peace" affected how we feel about them — hopefully good enough to vote.

Is that gone now that AI has entered the chat, literally and figuratively?

I don't know. What I do know is that traditional beauty standards have always been hard to maintain, and put a finger on. Often times they're out of reach unless you put a lot of time, effort, and money into your body.

In my eyes, definitely a topic or discussion worth having at your next networking event over a cocktail, mocktail, beer.

Check out the finalists and let me know what you think. I'm curious.

06/06/2024

Are you mad at generative-AI? If not, you might be now.

AI is making its film festival debut at Tribeca Film Festival — which starts today.

Why's this important? Because Sora AI, OpenAI's text-to-video platform isn't even out yet. It's on the hush-hush right now.

What they did was give early access to the AI platform to five phenonemal filmmakers and directors; Bonnie Discepolo, Ellie Foumbi, Michaela Ternasky-Holland, Reza Sixo Safai, and Nikyatu Jusu.

Truly, check out these amazing people and their projects if you're interested in geeking out over film. I did.

The Tribeca Film Festival announced it will host "Sora Shorts." Sora Shorts is a new program featuring five original short films all made using the AI.

“Tribeca is rooted in the foundational belief that storytelling inspires change. Humans need stories to thrive and make sense of our wonderful and broken world,” said co-founder and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises, Jane Rosenthal.

Sora is capable of creating videos up to 60-seconds, where other models could only manage clips of around 6-8 seconds.

What’s unique about Sora are the camera moves, distinct background characters with subjects capable of interacting with others, the ability to view the same scene from different perspectives, trigger events in the moment — at separate times — and even be aware of its surroundings.

If you're in the Lower Manhattan area, check it out. It starts today and runs until June 16th.

Stay updated on event, festival, and generative-AI trends in the event industry by following us, or if you’re interested in geekin’ out over generative-AI LLMs specifically, check out the course I created in our bio. It’s not free, but it’s absolutely worth it.