Crumbs from the Scone
Yeah okay so it’s not exactly a direct quote from The Who but it made you look!
Today I want to talk a little about video and audio pod casting. It can be tough and costly to win sympathetic ears for your life-changing service. But the Net—and a wildfire proliferation of iPods—have conceived a powerful ally for you: the podcast. A full 18.5 million US users listened to podcasts last year—a figure that might hit 65 million by 2012, says eMarketer. And Podtrac and TNS claim podcast advertising is three times as effective as “traditional” online ads.
There’s no mystique to using podcasting to benefit your brand. You’ll need patience, well-planned material (try scripts out on your apathetic spouse!)—and a bit of time. The trick is doing it effectively. Don’t start a podcast series before realizing what commitment it requires. Leaving it to die on the vine might do more harm than good. Some tips:
Plan a schedule. Will you broadcast monthly, weekly? Canvas topics beforehand; don’t scramble for material the night before. Thankfully, podcasts don’t have to be long (3-4 minutes).
Spend on-air time wisely. Avoid hard-sells. Entertaining and informing are the priority, but consistently mention your brand at the end. You can also try incorporating it in a randomly playful way. (Retro fun: bring back the jingle!)
Launch a microsite where fans can commune, contact you and read transcripts or blogs. (Think of the SEO benefits!) Don’t forget to analyze progress: Feedburner’s good for measuring unique subscribers per show; Podtrac and Volomedia lend demographic insight.
Ready to start? Try these services: Garageband (great for Mac-heads), Gcast, ClickCaster or Audacity.
Cast off! Podcasting reaps major brand recognition for minor effort. Try it—but plan for the long-term!
source:MarketingProfs newsletter
Crumbs from the Scone
With the latest seismic shifts in the U.S. economy, it seemed a good time to check back to Jon Miller’s “definitive guide to B2B marketing during a downturn,” first presented last June in his Modern B2B Marketing blog. Here are seven of Miller’s smart tips.
1. Use lead management to maximize the value of each lead. When prospects are fearful, Miller says, “you need lead scoring to identify which leads are highly engaged, and lead nurturing to develop relationships.”
2. Focus on your house list. Spend more time marketing to (and building relationships with) the people you already know.
3. Build and optimize landing pages. Jon Miller wisely informs us that “a dedicated landing page is the single most effective way to turn a click into a prospect.”
4. Develop content for later in the buying cycle. Stick to the surer thing: “focus your offers on content that will appeal to someone who’s actually looking for a solution.”
5. Appeal to the nervous buyer. Says Miller: “[Include] customer references, reviews, expert opinions, awards, and other validation as part of your marketing.”
6. Align sales and marketing. Both teams should work together to create a single revenue pipeline.
7. Don’t be a cost center. “[M]arketing investments must be justified with a rigorous business case and should be amortized over the entire ‘useful life’ of the investment,” says Miller.
Tough times can be toughed out. Tips like these can help ensure you stay on top during a downturn.
source:Modern B2B Marketing.
Crumbs from the Scone
Is it more effective to tell customers your brand name right away in advertising? Or is it better to create a little mystery, and reveal the brand name only at the end of the ad, once you’ve intrigued them?
One might think that it’s better to create some mystery. (After all, who doesn’t love a Mystery Man?) Holding off the brand-name reveal might sustain customer attention, and make people focus on the ad for a longer period of time. Right? Well, wait just a minute, there, folks.
Research is showing that a customer’s memory for ads and brands is actually better when the brand name is presented early in the ad. (Think: “Nike’s newest cross-trainer” vs “A great new athletic shoe!”)
The reason? Researchers suggest that an early statement of the brand name helps customers more easily recognize what brand and product category is being advertised. And if they have a positive image of it, they’ll read, view, or listen further. Subsequent information can then be encoded with this frame of reference in mind—giving you a better chance of making your message stick.
So even though creating an air of mystery in an ad is fun, and it might draw customers in, it’s best to make sure you work your brand name into the mix right at the start as well.
The Point: Be up front. Stating your name early in an ad encourages better brand recognition and message retention by customers.
source: Do Not Wait to Reveal the Brand Name. Baker, William E.; Honea, Heather; Russell, Cristel Antonia.
Journal of Advertising, 2004
Crumbs from the Scone
Research coming out of Penn State reports that 20% of tweets—those wee messages published on Twitter—are brand-oriented. And not the way you’d naturally expect. While researchers originally thought they’d find lots of brand engagement in the form of product reviews or referrals, what they discovered was this (hold on to your hat):
The vast majority of tweeters who talk labels are trying to connect with brands—and the companies behind them.
Double wow! This is one of the reasons Twitter is so darned good for CRM: people want to meet you halfway! (The other reason is that Twitter makes it so easy for folks to air their every whim that you find out what they’re really thinking, not just what they want you to hear.) (You eavesdropper, you.)
And there’s more good news: Now there are handy tools to help keep a leash on these winds of preference-change. HootSuite and TweetDeck, for example, help you keep track of multiple Twitter accounts. You can also create special groups for search terms. Say, for example, you’re Nike. Open up a search group for “Nike,” and you’ll receive instant updates in that box every time somebody on Twitter mentions you. (Prepare to be deluged!)
Suffering from stage fright? Don’t, love.
“A lot of the brand comments were positive,” observes Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and tech at Penn State, after his group tracked over a half-million brand-related tweets. “There are some good products out there, or at least products that people are happy with.” High five!
The Point: Just do it. Reason #3208493240983 to leap aboard the Goodship Twitter: at least two in ten people on the site want to reach out to brands they dig. That’s a big number. As for the other eight? Think of ’em as converts-to-be.
Cheers,
Skip
reference: MarketingProfs newsletter- 10-15-2009
Crumbs from the Scone
It’s amazing how often I speak to clients about the benefits of having a well administered blog. As I’m standing up on my web developer podium preaching the benefits of bloggy greatness and espousing the need to REGULARLY post to one’s new fantastic traffic driving blog, I always have to pause and give the now painfully oft spoken disclaimer “Do as I say, not as I do… don’t go and visit MY blog cause I haven’t posted since the Eisenhower administration”. Yes, yes I hear all you cobblers out there bemoaning the state of your own children’s footwear. 🙂
Okay, so… I’m in the process of putting Shadowbend Studios v4.0 together and, in preparation for the launch and the launch of the new site “Skip Sommer Photography” (more on that in another post). I’m banging the rust off my blog and seeing if the gears still work.
So, here I am. Back in the proverbial saddle and looking forward to a MUCH more routine blogging schedule. Hell, I may actually have something worthwhile to say on occasion!
Cheers,
Skip
Technical Articles
As a happy, satisfied and devoted Mac user, I’m legally bound to love everything that Apple does right? Right? (are my lawyers listening??). In any event, I HAVE noticed (as have a handful of my clients) that there tends to be an “issue” when you import an image with transparencies into Microsoft Word for the Mac (okay this really is a Microsoft issue….. Apple is off the hook once again). Images imported do not read properly and can even show up as a simple black box.
Quick Tip: Depending on the image and how you are presenting it, saving the image as a pdf file will correct most of the transparency issues.
Technical Articles
Hello everyone….
I recently visited ClickZ and found an article that interested me entitled “Advertiser Directories: The Key to Successful Online Ads”
Now let me start off by being completely honest here… Online Advertising is an area that I am just getting my feet wet in and as such some of the concepts and terminology are a bit alien to me.
Having said that, somewhere around paragraph 10 the “light went on” and I went back and re-read the whole article. The basic idea was to take the concept of Advertiser Directories which are typically found in magazines, usually in the latter portion of the magazine there is an area which list advertisers and which keeps the advertising in the “main” portion of the mag to a minimum thereby allowing the reader to enjoy the content much more, and apply the idea to online advertising.
One of the ideas that was provided was the Marketing Web Site set up by Architectural Digest, which features not only straight forward online advertising, by mini articles which link to advertisers sites as well as contest and sweepstakes.
At first blush I think that this is a tremendous idea. Personally I am not a big fan of the current “crop” of online advertising offerings which seem, at least to these eyes, to be focused more on “glitz, animation and annoyance” then anything truly informative. Also, I had to chuckle when I read the article authors comment:
“If only I had a dollar for every time I caught a glimpse of an interesting banner just as I was clicking off a page, to search for it in vain (curse tight frequency caps). I can only imagine consumers are doing the same.”
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen a banner ad that I was actually INTERESTED in, just as I was clicking off the page only to sigh and resign myself to the knowledge that it would take an eternity to go back and rapid click in the hopes of finding that same ad again.
While I haven’t sat down and thought through all of the ramifications of online advertiser directories, it just seems to me setting up a directory system where you have access to all of the advertisers that a particular site or company wants to promote and that would be topical to the site would be incredibly well received.
I can imagine a situation where you would have a site that is lighter in advertising content and heavier on topical content but included links (via the banners etc) to the Advertisers Directory portion of the site (or a separate site in the case of the AD example) where visitors could view all of the adverts together. Not only would that be more convenient for the visitor, but advertisers would know that, when a visitor clicks on the directory link, they are in the mindset of wanting information on a product, in other words…. they are there to buy a product or service rather than trying to find the clickable area on the latest popup banner that will CLOSE the window!
Take care everyone,
Skip
Affordable Web Design in the San Francisco Bay Area
Graphic Design and Web Design Portfolio
Crumbs from the Scone
Well… it’s near midnight on a Sunday and I’m about ready to start a new work week here at the studio.
I just finished my last assignment for my current class with the International Webmasters Association…Legal Issues for Web Designers and Content Managers. This was a great class, and one I have been looking forward to taking as I think that the legal aspects of web design is something that many designers do not consider fully during the course of a project and I want to be able to add that to the list of services I offer my clients.
I’m going to keep this post short and sweet as I am… very……… nearly………. falling aslee…..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
HUH, WHAT??, WHAT DID I MISS?!?!?! oh…. my I hate that. In any event, for those who may be interested, here is a course summary that I put together as a sort of week-to-week class journal…
Legal Issues Class Summary.
Take Care everyone… I’m for bed!
Skip
Crumbs from the Scone, The Shelf Chronicles
Okay, first a disclaimer:
This will be a thread of posts that is not directly related to web design, graphic design, illustration, photography, animation, drafting, technical illustration, branding, email marketing, search engine optimization, small business ownership or the current political situation in the tiny Republic of Alviso…
However, this is one of those things that I like to do periodically because it is so vital to keeping my creative spirit, sense of wonder and child-like adventurous spirit (careful now… I said “child-like”, not childish) nurtured.
But I digress…
The background:
Right before my children were born and became my passion, I said good-bye to my then current passion; gaming. Specifically, miniature wargaming. The entire lot went up on ebay and, while it did fetch a good price, I was sad to see it go.
(sigh) at least I still have the pictures:
Since then, my life has centered around my children, my job (I still had my day job at that point) my new business etc, etc. Not much room for cool toys and whimsical hobbies.
So, here I am, 3 years later. The kids are growing, I’ve left my day job, my business is doing well and I seem to have at least some sense of settling in to a much more predictable day-to-day life (predictable, but far from boring). I find myself with some discretionary gray matter which I can reserve for “fun”. So I came up with the idea of putting up a shelf in my office which will contain “fun” stuff; toys, statues, reminders of my childhood etc.
A quick trip to IKEA brought me home the shelf I needed and it was installed the same afternoon.
And so here we are… my shelf is up and is already populated with such things as my Lord of the Rings Statues (Gollum, Minas Tirith and the Argonath:
I have been enjoying the idea of researching vintage toys from places such as Amazon.com where I have my wish list and look forward to adding more and more to my collection, catering to my whimsical fun side and childlike sense of adventure and wonder (once again, for those of you keeping score, I said CHILDLIKE, not CHILDISH) 🙂
And so begins “The Shelf Chronicles”…
Hail the Recreational!!
Skip
Crumbs from the Scone
As many of you may know, the name Shadowbend comes from a small cottage somewhere on Gist road in the hills south of Los Gatos. Ever since I was a toddler my family has had a tradition of going to the Four Winds Christmas Tree Farm in the Santa Cruz mountains. We would take the winding road up to Skyline Blvd and on the way, pass a cottage on a tight bend in the mountain road. There was a small sign outside that just read “Shadowbend”. For some reason the name resonated with me I have kept it in mind for years. When the time came to name my business, it did not take long to come up with “Shadowbend Studios”.
During the Autumn of 2006 I took a few “photo junkets” and in September I headed south to Santa Cruz, over to Fresno then back up through the Gold Country. On my way down highway 17 I decided to take a detour up Black Road to see if I might be able to locate that old cottage. I had not been on that route in years but I knew it as if I had done it the day before. It was strange how familiar it was after so long. After a few miles up on Gist road I came to a hair pin turn and there it was… right there in front of me.
I knew the house instantly even though the sign was not there anymore. I parked and took a few shots of the place and even went so far as to walk up to the front door and knock to see if anyone was home. I was actually going to inquire as to whether they were the same owners and might still have the sign stored someplace! I must have stayed there in front of the cottage for the better part of a half hour… just taking it in. It was a wonderful experience to reconnect with the place that held memories for me and helped me create the spirit of my new business.
Happy New Year to you all,Blessings,Skip
