Sage Island is a fast-paced interactive marketing agency with a team-
oriented environment. We’re looking for a talented graphic designer who can conceptualize and implement creative multimedia designs for a variety of web and print media.

Sage Island is the ideal environment for the multi-talented designer with the experience and creativity necessary to experiment with new design concepts. This position reports directly to the creative director, but also works closely with account executives to ensure client satisfaction. The ideal candidate is a team-player who is comfortable working independently, meeting deadlines, and revising work to meet client needs.

Sound like you? Check out the Sage Island job board for the full list of qualifications and skill requirements.

Are you trying to market to an older audience and aren’t sure the best way to reach them? Well the Internet might be your best option. According to a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project, increasing percentages of older American are now online and doing more once they get there. The largest increase in internet use since 2005 was seen in the 70 to 75 age group, now more than 45% of that group is online – compared to only 26% in ’05.

This huge increase means great things to marketers. With the increasing number of senior targeted websites, reaching the 65+ market is easier than ever before. These older Americans are not just sending email, they are downloading videos, shopping and researching health information.

Additionally, Generation X is age group most likely to bank, shop and buy online. This leaves teens and Generation Y as the most likely to seek entertainment online, including gaming, videos and virtual worlds.

This data only proves that the internet is not just a medium to reach young Americans, it is a valid media source for all generations.

Check out the entire report from Pew Internet and American Life Project.

When President Obama took office on January 20, he ushered in a new era in the White House — a new media era including an updated interactive website and the first ever White House blog.

Despite the fact that the President’s campaign staff was smart with social media throughout the campaign, I was still a little skeptical about how the new administration would utilize social media methods — particularly the blog. Would it end up being a glorified PR page with nothing but press releases and no real social engagement?

Today they proved me wrong with the nation’s first ever official White House liveblog of President Obama’s town hall meeting in Ft. Myers, FL. The up-to-the-minute updates included quotes from the speech, snippets of conversation between the President and the crowd, and links to other pertinent information.

The White House liveblog has taken ordinary PR one step further to real interaction and engagement. Citizens who couldn’t be at the townhall meeting could experience official live updates directly from the administration.

I’d still rather get my news from a trusted, unbiased news source (The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were also liveblogging the events yesterday and today as well as a countless other independent political and news bloggers), but it’s still nice to see the administration utilizing social media to its full potential to interact with the American public.

Last month, TechCrunch reported that Facebook has grown to double the size of MySpace, which was once the top social media site in terms of traffic, growth, and users. Now according to Compete, Twitter is rising fast.

In the past year, Twitter has jumped from the #22 spot in visits to #3. It’s still light years behind Facebook and MySpace, though. Facebook receives an astonishing 1,191,373,339 visits per month and MySpace receives 810,153,536, which puts Twitter at a distant third with only 54,218,731 monthly visits. But Twitter is showing amazing potential for growth. It continues to grow exponentially as MySpace’s numbers (both in visits and time on site) are declining. This is even more amazing considering the fact that Twitter has no business model and no revenue. Yet.

It will be interesting to see where Twitter goes next, and what social media sites will skyrocket in the coming year.

The way we use search engines is about to be turned upside down. Yahoo! is finalizing an application that will keep track of your searches, recognize when you are doing research and store the information for later use. The new tool, Yahoo! Search Pad, is still in the test phases, but according to company previews the tool will work like an elaborate bookmarking system.

For example, if you are researching a vacation and purchasing a new TV, separate categories will emerge in your Search Pad that will allow you to keep sites organized and grouped. You can go back to the Search Pad and write summaries about the sites you have visited, delete sites you no longer need and order them as you see fit. The tool can be turned off on a search by search basis or turned off completely.Yahoo! Search Pad is a great example of how Yahoo! is working to set themselves apart from Google and other search engines.

To learn more about this new tool check out this video from Tom Chi, Senior Director of Product Management for Yahoo Search.

A recent study by the Google User Experience Research team (featured here at WebProNews) determined that searches have become so routine that users tend to make decisions about where to look and what to click unconsciously. But Google is clever. They’re using eye-tracking technology to gather valuable information about how users scan search results:

“Based on eye-tracking studies, we know that people tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it — or until they decide to refine their query. The heatmap below shows the activity of 34 usability study participants scanning a typical Google results page. The darker the pattern, the more time they spent looking at that part of the page. This pattern suggests that the order in which Google returned the results was successful; most users found what they were looking for among the first two results and they never needed to go further down the page.”

According to Google, adding images to a search results page does not affect the order in which users view results. Even if images appear below text links, users’ eyes are drawn to the top results first.

These results aren’t surprising. They prove what any SEO-savvy marketer already knows — one of the most effective ways of getting noticed on the Web is appearing in the top organic results for your strongest keywords. What does surprise me is how quickly users lose interest in a results page — many users don’t even look beyond the second result.

If you’re not at the top or close to it, now might be the time to revamp your search engine optimization strategy to make sure you’re capitalizing on the power of organic search.

With the current state of the US economy, many businesses are scrambling to make ends meet and are finding any available expenses that can be cut. In many cases marketing budgets are the first thing to go. However, several companies have found new and innovative ways to reach their customers and drive sales.

Hyundai is a great example of a company speaking the words their customers want to hear. Last fall they started testing an idea that was revolutionary in the automotive industry – a return policy. This concept is foreign to car buyers and dealers alike, but what Hyundai realized was that people are not hesitant to buy cars (if they are priced right), they are scared of losing their jobs and being stuck with a car payment. Their return policy states that if you lose your job within one year of purchasing your car, they will cover the difference in the value of the car and the amount the buyer owes. This policy extends to disability, loss of driver’s license, foreign job transfers, bankruptcy and death. This is only one innovative example of how Hyundai has grown to the world’s fifth largest automaker and has 7% of the US market share. Not bad when you take a look at the current state of the US auto industry.

We are all familiar with online advertisements on our favorite websites, but what if those ads were targeted directly at us and based on our search habits? Most of those typical, generic ads are just that — typical and generic and not driving revenue for marketers. Enter personalized ads. Overstock.com is testing a new personalized advertising concept that displays ads based on what their site visitors are viewing, and if these ads aren’t getting clicks, they change when you change what you are viewing. This new technique garnered seven times as many clicks on their ads and a threefold increase in sales for Overstock.com

So in a time when business owners are selling their homes just to keep their businesses afloat, some companies are revolutionizing the way they reach their customers and are seeing revolutionary success to match. All it takes is a little creativity!