There’s a photo circulating on the internet from the Blackmass movie premiere of an old woman standing without a cellphone enjoying the red-carpet event with a sea of people around her glued to their phone - relegated to enjoying the event on a small screen as they try to capture the memory of it. The event featured movie stars Johnny Depp and Dakota Johnson - so it’s understandable why people were so eager to make sure they captured the moment. The reason this photo was circulating on blog posts and social media platforms was because of the shear look of bliss on the woman’s face as she simply enjoyed the moment in real time. If you look at the demographics of people around her, it would be interesting to delve into how different people were utilizing their phones. I’m sure the older generation were simply capturing pictures, while the younger generations may have been posting images directly to social media or even live streaming the event for their followers to see. What’s consistent about all phone users at the event is that they were taken out of a real moment by an application on their mobile devices. As I looked at this picture it made me wonder if we really need applications on our mobile devices

To avoid falling into the thralls of a semantical debate about needs and wants, let’s consider the question of whether we could survive in the modern world without the applications on our mobile devices instead of whether we actually need applications on our mobile devices. Phone apps, like most technological evolutions, are a pandoras box of possibilities that once released cannot be put back. Look at Airplanes. We don’t necessarily need airplanes to get around the world but without them it would be impossible for you to make it to that conference in Rome next week and still be back in time for your daughter’s ballet recital next month. Once we became open to the possibility of travelling from North America to Europe in under 10 hours the idea of taking that 45-day journey by boat is not even an option. Travel is a lot more of a black and white issue than phone applications because for years most things you could do on your phone you could also do on your computer, however, as applications evolved so did our dependency on them.

What’s interesting is when you look at the applications for mobile use that can’t be met on a desktop computer it becomes evident that a lot of them have to do with your location. Things like banking and checking the weather can easily be done on your computer. Music devices still exist outside of your phone, stores still exist in brick and mortar, sports updates, food and dating can all still be found somewhere else but information about you and where exactly you are can only really be tracked by your mobile device. When our phones die and we’re not at home there’s almost a sense of panic. How am I going to get an Uber? How would I call a cab? How do I get where I’m going? And how do I even let them know that I’m coming?
 
In the modern world life outside of your home without your phone is barely sustainable. The need for real time information has become too high for us to keep up with the pace of the world around us. I wonder if that woman at the movie premiere might have been okay with watching a video of the event had she not been able to go in person. It could be that she’s a purist – for her being there physically is the only real way to experience life. Or maybe she just let the modern, fast pace, socially and technologically integrated world pass her by and is content with simply living in the moment until her last. There’s nothing wrong with being unplugged. In fact, studies suggest being too plugged in is doing a lot of harm to the youth of the world. But there’s a reason that businesses seek to target the younger generation for employment and their services – everything is going digital, and every young person is plugged in.

After the COVID -19 pandemic in 2020 and the new normal world we all live in, most businesses realized that they could efficiently run their business with their employees from home - saving thousands of dollars a year in real estate leases. Zoom has become the new conference table. People are pulling over in their cars to hop into a quick zoom meeting on their device. Social media platforms like LinkedIn are connecting employers with potential employees from all over the world and allowing them to share key information in their profiles. The importance of receiving information in real-time makes it unimaginable that we once lived in a world where you could only check and respond to emails while sitting at a computer. Phone applications reigned supreme prior to the COVID-19 pandemic but since the pandemic the necessity for mobile apps has reached a new height.

While recently travelling to Turkey my phone stopped charging on my second day of a 6-day trip. The inconvenience of not being able to check a maps app to find food locations, use google translate to easier communicate with locals and use social media apps to connect with new friends wasn’t even the worst part of not being able to access the different applications on my phone. While returning to Canada I printed all the necessary documents needed to travel – vaccination certificate, boarding pass, and CPR test confirmation. Even though I had all these papers, as I was returning to Canada through Pearson International airport in Toronto, I was asked to download the Arrive Canada app to fill out my COVID-19 screening exam. After informing the immigration officer that I did not have access to the application as my phone was not working, they allowed me to fill out one of the paper forms and enter the country with little resistance (though it definitely took me longer than everyone else with a phone).

The necessity for the mobile app actually came after I had passed immigration. A few days later I received an automated call from the government of Canada informing me that I was under a quarantine order - an officer even came to my house to check if I was quarantining. I informed her that there had been a mistake with the system, I was fully vaccinated and had gotten a negative PCR test prior to returning to Canada. She apologized for the confusion and let me know she would update the system – she didn’t, the calls kept coming. After 8 days I received a call from another agent, again making sure I was keeping up with quarantine, and during this call the agent let me know the reason for my quarantine status was because only statuses registered through the app are kept in the system. Even though I produced all the documents I may still be liable for a $5000 fine for non-compliance with the Quarantine Act. The agent was nice about it, removed me from the non-compliance list and we both agreed that the system was highly unfair against those without mobile devices or people in my situation where their phones were not working. The thing we didn’t have to say to each other because we both knew it to be true was that we can’t survive in the modern world without a mobile device and the applications that come with it.

Are Mobile Apps necessary?

They’re not just Apps, they’re our way of life

Over time blogging has transformed to keep up with changing opinions and the way we communicate with one another. In the mid 1990’s when blogs first began circulating the internet they were referred to as personal homepages and barely caught the attention of readers who didn’t know the writer personally. In the two decades that have followed they have broadened their reach and diversified their purpose to the user. A blog post is designed to cultivate a discussion, and like a verbal discussion in real life, the most important driving force behind any blog post is the interest generated by the topic. 

Take this blog post for instance; this blog post will focus on ‘How Blog Posts Engage Customers’. If you are someone who is reading a blog, then this topic almost automatically invites you to consider the reason you are reading. The reason people read anything is because they are interested in gaining the information being presented by the topic. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but we all judge a book by the summary on the back cover. It not only acts as an introduction to the larger content available to you, but more importantly, it allows you to spend a minimal amount of time gathering enough information to see if the larger content is worth the larger time investment. For a blog post, that summary on the back cover that helps you decide whether you want to read the book or not is simply the title of blog. 

The title of a blog is the only opportunity the writer has to invite the reader to continue engaging with the article. This is why the titles of most blog articles are questions that are posed to invoke an answer from the reader that they will want to compare with the opinions and findings within the blog, or statements that are designed to invoke a similar desire for contrast. Think about the reason behind why people read comments under Facebook or Instagram posts. The idea is that you already have a thought, but you read the other comments to see what other people are thinking about the topic. The title of the blog acts like the picture while the article itself is a collection comments, presented by the writer, that the reader wants to take in because they have already formulated their own thoughts and opinions on the title. 

When it comes to blog posts that are tailored to a particular product as opposed to written as an opinionative piece, the importance of the information being communicated is more weighted on the honesty and transparency of the writer. In order to engage a customer, you have to build trust and show a sense of expertise at the same time. So, to bring it all full circle; how would a blog post engage a potential customer? 

It would have to begin with a title that tickles the curiosity of the reader and invites them to give more thought to the product or service being promoted by the writer. But how do you know if someone is even reading the article? Well, you can always track the traffic on the website through clicks or views. Although that’s a good way to know if people were there, if you want to truly be engaging with the customers you need a glimpse into their response to the blog in order to be able to gauge whether they’re even buying what you’re selling. A great way to gain insight into whether readers are being converted into customers is to provide a comment section that allows you to gather feedback from people engaging with your blog. 



So now you see the comments coming in (and hey, some of them are even positive) but your engagements are still limited to the people reading your blog. What if your website isn’t getting a lot of traffic though? How do you increase the amount of people engaging with your blog? A great way to increase the amount of people engaging with your blog to is to make sure that readers have the ability to share the blog on more popular platforms. Not a lot of people may visit your averagejoe.com website to(or) even get a chance to read your blog but if just one person posts(shares) it to their public Facebook page, then your reach has just expanded exponentially. On top of utilizing social media platforms to expand your reach, there are also multiple ways to utilize search engine optimization strategies to increase the visibility of your website through google searches as a way to increase the likelihood of your blog post popping up when any related topic is being searched. 

Now your blog is popping up all over Facebook, Twitter and maybe you even do a voiceover plug of the website through Instagram and YouTube links. How do you know if the blog is effectively engaging customers? Well first you have to consider what makes an engagement effective as far as a customer is concerned and that’s a no brainer: leads generated. A lead is essentially interest generated and acted upon by a customer. The same kind of interest that is generated by the back cover summary of a book that leads the reader to purchase the book or the interest generated by the title of a blog that leads to the reader to read the entire blog post. A lead is interest turned into action and that is how a blog post engages a potential customer. The blog post must turn the interest of the reader into action, and it begins with liking the title and ends ultimately with them sharing the post. But it never actually ends because a good blog is shared over and over again, repeating the cycle of interest and action.

Essence of The Blog

How Blog Posts Engage Potential Customers

Growing up working class, I never imagined a career path that would be creative and flexible let alone in the Art World. From young age, like most kids, I would doodle in my notebooks and create fantastical scenarios where ever I roamed. In the woods, in the forest, by the river, and in my home - alone or with friends and family - there was and continues to be an explosion of expressive “what ifs” playing through my mind. Art was never presented as a creative outlet, most of my life was an exploration of how to express my minds eye. 
One way or another, I ended up with a camera in my hand trying to convince myself that I would be an action sports photographer. It’s funny because that’s not what I truly wanted. Though I believed as a teenager that there would be fun inclusive career opportunities if i went down that path. During that journey, I stumbled into galleries museums and artist run centres and my relationship with the camera started shifting. I craved a painterly feeling from all images. In time a started to believe the camera had much more range that a simple tool to capture the world around us. The camera is no different from a paintbrush, pencil, or any other mark making tool. Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, and Yves Tanguy were a few of the first 20th century painters that latched on to my subconscious bringing their reoccurring themes into my own aesthetic values. 

Within varying degrees they all explored subconscious imagery which is an interesting, inclusive, yet esoteric way to go about painting. Using conventional painting techniques of the 20th century, Dali would exaggerate and warp the forms of animals, people, places, and things. Bacon, often focusing on portraits, would capture a moment of “unease” through his subjects, smudging the paint - as if he’s being violent to the canvas. Outside of the aforementioned two, the only truly familiar aspect of Tanguy’s paintings is the light and shadow. His painting are outer worldly and calm, emanating an eerie essence.
In the early years of my young adult life, images of their paintings and many other surreal works haunting my mind pushing me to crave an itch to create. Using the camera as a brush to paint with light, I may many attempts at embodying an aura I lust for in paintings. Disappointing, but the digital camera has a whole different essence. I almost felt the aura I was looking for through analog Black and White photography. But that also, has its own aura and feelings. Perhaps this is because traditionally fine art has been primarily paintings; holding on to some kind of inherent upper status. Or its simple and, the mediums are just different so they visual read and feel different. Maybe both, but maybe also I am not artistically there.
The camera was bringing me more angst than pleasure. Yet, I married the Photographer believing I could make a career out of it. With no additional resources for a way out and planning to finish a degree in 2 years. I thought creativity was doomed to be a mediocre angle to my person. Still, I craved to build, I craved to create, and I craved to see something new. In 2016, my eyes were blessed by the collage work of Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan visual artist living in New York City. Finally, I saw something I truly thought was new and exciting. The work was delicate, sullen and challenging. Her work embodies so many paintly feelings, yet it was paper. My artistic practice of collage was an unexpected child of my creativity. And Mutu’s collages were the visual push I never saw coming. 
Regardless, consuming images and creating images is constant in my life, so consciously I’ve decided to look at images through a criteria to help myself understand images.

<ul>
<li>1. Whats the medium (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)</li>
<li>2. Concept (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)</li>
<li>3. Technical Proficiency (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment) </li>
<li>4. Who is the Artist (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)</li>
<li>5. Style (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)</li>
<li>6. Who is the viewer (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment)</li>
<li>7. What is being depicted (in relation to the cultural canon) (local cultural environment) </li>
</ul>
Not only understand images as images but also understand them in relation to the “global” cultural canon and in relation to their local cultural environment. The goal being to better grasp ways to contextualize how and why images make me feel the way I do.

Ogiven Blogs

They’re not just Apps, they’re our way of life

How Blog Posts Engage Potential Customers

Feeling the Difference - Fine Art Photography and Digital Media