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Category: Featured

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

UX Writing and Microcopy: Writing for Web Design (With Examples)

We’re huge fans of scroll-stopping design around here. (In fact, it’s kind of our thing.) But we also believe great websites that get results require the right mix of conversion-focused design and compelling UX writing.  In this blog, we’re talking all about UX writing and microcopy – what it is, why it’s fundamental when building your website, and how to create engaging copy for the web that moves your audiences to action.  What is UX Writing?  ... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Design Featured

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

How Does Web Design Impact Your Overall Marketing Strategy?

If you’re in the boat of thinking of your marketing strategy and your website as two separate things, think again.  In fact, your web presence should be the very first place to begin when developing a strong marketing plan. Your website has the potential to be your best sales asset, and works at the front lines of communicating your story to key audiences and solidifying your brand voice and personality.  For organizations who aim to captivate their audience from the fi... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, November 16, 2022
Design Featured

Wednesday, November 9, 2022

7 Tips for Wrapping Up Your Website This Holiday Season

With the holidays approaching fast, how are you preparing? Are you the kind to put your Christmas tree up the moment Halloween is over, or are you decorating and doing all your shopping the week before Christmas? However you swing it, between decorating and shopping and coordinating family get-togethers, it's easy to become completely swept up by everything you need to do OOO between November and the end of the year. But don't forget, the second half of Q4 is your final stretch t... Read More
Posted by Amy Dunbar Wednesday, November 9, 2022
Featured Ideas

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

8 Smart Ways to Maximize Your Year-End Marketing Budget

As we near the end of the year and large projects wind down, you may be finding yourself with some extra funds left in your marketing budget for 2022.  While it’s always a nice feeling to have completed everything on your marketing to-do list for the year and have come in under budget, not making use of your full budget may mean losing it for the coming year. No matter the size of your remaining budget, there are several small investments you can make now that will maximize t... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Featured Strategy

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Driving Donations This #GivingTuesday: A Quickstart Guide for Nonprofits

Nonprofit leaders, marketers, and champions for good: I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Giving Tuesday is right around the corner, and with it comes one of your biggest opportunities to craft a campaign that will drive donations for your organization.  More Americans donate money from November through December than any other time of year. With giving on the brain during the holiday season, you’d be remiss not to take advantage of this time to tell your story ... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Development Featured

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

Marketing Vocabulary Words You Should Know

Marketing Vocabulary For Beginners If you’re just beginning your adventure into marketing, welcome!  Practically every business needs some form of marketing, digital or otherwise.  Especially within the last year, business owners large and small have discovered that the need for a digital presence is essential to their company’s survival.  Marketing is about meeting your customers where they are and getting in front of the eyes that are most likely to act on your b... Read More
Posted by Digital Marketing Team Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Featured Ideas

Monday, October 10, 2022

Decision-Making Tactics for Senior Level Marketers: The OODA Loop

Leadership requires exceptional decision-making skills. But in the life of a marketer – who on any given day is having to keep tabs on dozens of channels, tactics, analytics, and audiences to name just a few – it can be easy to fall into a ready-fire-aim approach to decision making. Or if you’re Top Gun’s Maverick, don’t think, just do.  Urgency, pressure, complexity, resource limitations, and incomplete and/or conflicting information can easily influence ... Read More
Posted by Kristin Cales Monday, October 10, 2022
Featured Ideas

Wednesday, October 5, 2022

4 Ways to Harness the Power of Video for Your Next Website Design… And Why It’s a Must

Among an ever-increasing number of marketing tools, channels, and platforms, video has risen in the ranks and become a vital piece of many organizations’ marketing strategies.   In fact, if you’ve held off from investing in video as part of your marketing efforts, you’re likely missing out on a number of conversions and major ROI. It’s long been said that, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but with new research, we can actually quantify... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Design Featured

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Speak Creative Takes Home 8 Web Excellence Awards

The Web Excellence Awards, a leading international interactive web awards competition, has announced the 2022 award winners to highlight this year's "best of the best" in web design and development. The team of designers, developers, and strategists at Speak Creative were recognized for excellence in web design for 8 websites built for our clients. We are proud to announce the award winning sites:  Fort Worth Zoo Guaranty Bank Lung Cancer Research Foundatio... Read More
Posted by Kristin Cales Tuesday, September 27, 2022
Featured Showcase

Wednesday, September 21, 2022

7 Things I've Learned in 7 Years at Speak

This summer, I celebrated my 7th "Speakiversary," our team's endearing term for work anniversaries.    According to Google, the traditional gifts for a 7th anniversary are copper and wool. If I were Oprah, I’d be announcing that you’re all going home with hoards of pennies and pet sheep. Unfortunately I couldn’t make that happen, so instead I’m sharing 7 of my top takeaways from my first 7 years at Speak Creative. ... Read More
Posted by Megan Jones Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Featured Ideas

Wednesday, September 14, 2022

Increase Engagement with 2 Google Analytics Reports

How do you objectively gauge how engaging your website's content is? Marketers don't have time or space for guesswork. Analyzing data to influence your future marketing decisions is key to an effective marketing strategy that isn't just a shot in the dark. In this blog, we're highlighting two reports that will give you the insight you need to assess engagement and plan for improvements. In case you're wondering, we'll be focusing on instructions that use Google&#... Read More
Posted by Kristin Cales Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Featured Strategy

Friday, September 9, 2022

Tackling Budget Barriers: 7 Steps To Go From Woes to Whoas

With the economy being... the economy, and inflation and other factors threatening budget cuts for organizations across all industries in the coming year, you've surely had your budget on the brain when making major marketing decisions.  If you've ever found yourself wanting to do more with your website and digital marketing strategy but are feeling held up by budget limitations, you’re not alone. Budgets serve a good and necessary purpose, but sometimes they leave us feel... Read More
Posted by Megan Jones Friday, September 9, 2022
Featured Strategy

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

5 Pieces of Website Data That Tell a Fuller Story

We live in the day of big data. Each day, tons and tons of data are being scraped all around us. While we may not appreciate some data collection, other forms of data collection are incredibly beneficial to our ability to market businesses and organizations to the right audiences. If you’ve ever jumped into Google Analytics, you’ve probably experienced the deer-in-headlights feeling of being faced with the amount of data available and being unsure of what exactly t... Read More
Posted by Digital Marketing Team Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Featured Strategy

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

How to Write Captions for Social Media that Engage Your Audience

If social media managers had a dollar for every time they couldn’t think of a caption for their social posts — well, they could retire. Coming up with the perfect line to capture the product or service you’re offering, amplify your brand’s voice, and engage with your audience is no easy feat. However, there are a few tactics you can always rely on to write a great caption, even when you get writer's block. In this blog, we’ll discuss different strategies you ... Read More
Posted by Maggie Dye Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Featured Social

Wednesday, August 24, 2022

Building a Brand, Building a Digital Community

Where it once was enough to amass a large following and call it a day, in the era of micro-influencers and a greater desire than ever for human connection following the Covid-19 pandemic, for many brands and influencers, cultivating a small but loyal community that is actively engaged in what you do is where engagement really counts.  Companies sell products and services to consumers all day, every day, but the truly special organizations, the ones that keep you coming back for more or ... Read More
Posted by Madelyn Bomar Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Development Featured

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

Speak's Top 5 Picks for Nonprofit Web Designs That Drive Traffic, Donations, and Better Engagement

Having an effective and compelling website is a vital first step in any nonprofit’s marketing strategy. However, this can feel like a tall order for many nonprofits who must leverage their complex needs within a framework that relies on a tight budget often driven by grants and external funding.  Speak has been working with nonprofit organizations across the nation for more than twenty years, so we’re more than a little familiar with the many moving parts that go into t... Read More
Posted by Digital Marketing Team Tuesday, August 16, 2022
Design Featured

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Making the Switch from Universal Analytics to GA4: Everything You Need to Know

After months of hints, press, and warnings from Google in your inbox to switch over before it’s too late, GA4 – Google’s new long-awaited data and analytics software – has finally arrived!  Google has touted GA4 as “the future of analytics.” A pretty bold declaration! We’ve spent the last several months switching our clients’ analytics over to the new software and have been getting to know the ins and outs of this promising new tracki... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Featured Strategy

Wednesday, August 3, 2022

Why You Should Consider Dark Mode for Your Next Web Design Project

Who turned off the lights? I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but our screens have been looking darker lately. Dark mode (also called black mode, dark theme, night mode, or lights-out mode) is an increasingly popular stylistic theme for websites and apps, and it's the reason why you may have noticed black backgrounds popping up everywhere. As dark mode design continues to grow in popularity (especially following the implementation of optional dark mode for Apple iOS, Facebook, ... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, August 3, 2022
Design Featured

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

Creating Company Swag Your Clients and Employees Will Actually Want

Speak has been in the biz for over 20 years, so we’ve seen our fair share of branded swag. Employee swag, client gifts, and outreach gifts featuring a company’s logo and/or branding are all relatively common for organizations to dole out. But often, these gifts earn the reputation of being poorly made, unuseful, or boring.  As a growing company ourselves, we’ve learned the ins and outs of branded gifts and freebies, and, as an agency that specializes in branding and ma... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Featured Ideas

Thursday, July 21, 2022

9 Things I've Learned in 9 Weeks as an Intern at Speak Creative

Speak welcomed four interns this summer, with two of us in Nashville and two representing the 901. Kevin was brought onto the Web Development team, Micah joined the Platforms team, London spent her summer as a Brand Strategy intern with the Audience Growth team, and I joined the powerhouse that is the Speak Agency Marketing team.  We spent our summers doing very different things, but I’m sure we’d all agree that we learned a lot. As I round out my time at Speak, I’m hi... Read More
Posted by Destiny Welch Thursday, July 21, 2022
Featured Showcase

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Content-First vs Design-First Approach

There are typically two design strategies that are considered when going through a website redesign. A design-first approach prioritizes the creative elements that are desired over the assets that will live on the site. Meanwhile, a content-first approach takes the assets you plan to have and builds the design around them. Both methods can lead to a polished website when it’s all said and done, but is there an approach that is more efficient? Speak has utilized both strategies during r... Read More
Posted by Adam Kalwas Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Design Featured Strategy

Wednesday, July 13, 2022

What you need to know about ADA Compliance Online

What is ADA Compliance for your website? Online accessibility is a topic that many organizations are eager to tackle, but it’s easy to get wrapped up in the details of it all. Making your website ADA Compliant means that it passes a number of tests for accessibility, and allows differently-abled users to access your content with ease. The criteria for these tests are called Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and they cover a number of technical details like: Color contrast for i... Read More
Posted by Matt Roberts Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Featured Ideas

Friday, July 8, 2022

Recapping Speak Halftime 2022

It doesn’t seem possible that we’re already halfway through 2022, but here we are. In many ways it feels like it was just weeks ago that our team met up for Speak Week in January to set our yearly goals. And yet, we’re forging into Quarter 3, with many of our goals and intentions for the year completed or well underway.   Every year, our team spends a day in the summer participating in what we like to call Halftime – a day dedicated to checking in on the goa... Read More
Posted by Claire Grace Friday, July 8, 2022
Featured Showcase

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

10 Quick Ways You Can (And Should!) Tidy Up Your Website and Marketing Presence Right Now

Although you may not have spring cleaning on the brain right now, a little seasonal cleanup can benefit more than just your home. When it comes to your online presence – your website and digital marketing channels – it’s important to check in on things often to ensure your marketing effort is tidy and running smoothly. Your website and digital marketing efforts are the online foundation to your business. If you don’t take time to frequently wipe the dust off t... Read More
Posted by Amy Dunbar Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Featured Strategy

Friday, June 24, 2022

9 SEO Myths to Leave Behind in Your Digital Marketing Efforts in 2022

It’s no myth that the internet and the world of digital marketing is a constantly evolving minefield. What worked two years ago, or even ten months ago, might not work today as our online habits change and new patterns are tracked.  It's 2022, and as Speak’s resident SEO expert, I’m putting on my best Sherlock Holmes hat and uncovering some common SEO myths that aren't applicable to websites any longer. Some are old ways of thinking that, while once true, are s... Read More
Posted by Allison Brown Friday, June 24, 2022
Featured Strategy