Episode 26 – Reddit and Facebook Updates, Marketing Crowd Funding, 5 Design Skills, and Snapchat UX

This week, our hosts Matt, Min, and Anna are joined by another newcomer, Will! Together, the group takes a deeper look at the latest happenings in Marketing, Min follows up her top 5 design skills, and everyone weighs in on UX and how it’s played into Snapchat’s big success.

Reddit and Facebook Updates [8:30]
Marketing Crowd Funding [15:20]
Min’s Top 5 Design Skills [20:10]
Snapchat’s User Experience [22:30]

Reddit and Facebook Updates

Reddit and Facebook have both released some major updates to their platforms that will play a larger role in the way new users consume information. Matt leads the group through a discussion on the implications for businesses in the modern era!

“Reddit’s front page will now show the most commonly used subreddits instead of the original 50 that the founders chose.” -Matt
“You can now list job openings on Facebook, which is kind of a jab at LinkedIn.” -Matt
“I feel like I would apply for a job on Facebook. Companies already post their job openings but now they can actually make it official!” -Anna
“In the digital world, everything, whether it’s private or not, is almost up for grabs. You always need to be conscious of what you’re putting out there.” -Will

Marketing Crowd Funding

Over the past few years, crowd funding has been rapidly gaining in popularity. Recently, some companies have been turning to professional help to market their crowd funding activities successfully. Anna takes some time to break down an example of one of those campaigns and discuss the implications.

“Polygon Design has used an agency to help boost their crowd funding activities and they had major success in the end.” -Anna
“I’ve been seeing a lot of tech companies use crowd funding to get themselves started recently.” -Matt
“Crowd funding is only a temporary fix, it’s a great way to start out but it’s really hard to run an entire business off crowd funding.” -Matt
“I’ve come across some Kickstarters that were very poorly done so when you come across one that’s put together really well it gives more incentive to consumers.” -Will
“I personally really like crowd funding when it’s going to something good like if it’s a struggling startup or a philanthropic cause.” -Anna

Min’s Top 5 Design Skills

If you recall, Matt had shared his top 5 marketing skills in last weeks episode and during that time Min promised she would share her top 5 design skills. This week, Min is back to share those skills in depth so you know where you should focus your design efforts!

“It’s very important to be able to tell people about your designs and why you chose to make them a specific way.” -Min
“Designers need to be able to understand that sometimes people just want things a certain way and be able to roll with the punches.” -Min
“Designers should know a bit about color theory, especially this year because there are so many vibrant colors being used.” -Min
“Having basic HTML and CSS knowledge can help out when you’re designing websites because you can understand how things have to function.” -Min
“Understanding how to design a website so it’s optimized to convert is huge, knowing where to put your buttons and calls to action makes a huge difference.” -Min
“Basic SEO knowledge is super helpful too because you need to know where to be putting your H1 and H2 tags when you’re formatting text.” -Min

Snapchat’s User Experience

Snapchat is hailed as one of the fastest growing social apps in the last year and one of the main competitors to Facebook in the social world. Much of Snapchat’s growth has been attributed to its great user experience and Min shares why!

“Snapchat’s featured stories has become a major focus for the company. When they designed it, they actually used people’s TV watching habits to design it.” -Min
“Snapchat is the first truly natively designed mobile video player. It’s seamless with its navigation and usage unlike other video players used on your mobile device” -Min
“TV Show’s like SNL and The Voice are actually creating shows specifically for Snapchat now.” -Min

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