TouchPoints

Today Is Brought To You By The Letter “M.”

joejdf — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 14:03:26 +0000

Ever wonder what my world is like? Sesame Street has the goods.

(Start ‘em young. That’s what I always say!)

P.S. “Sycophants?” Impressive!

A Global Journey Through Beer Marketing

joejdf — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:18:02 +0000

I’ve been meaning for a long time to write a post about my favorite beer campaign, Dos Equis’ “The Most Interesting Man in the World.” The reason I haven’t is because whenever I started thinking about it, it got me to thinking about beer campaigns in general. Whereas the Dos Equis campaign targets a more mature, refined guy (like me) versus an infantile male trying to relive lost days of keg stands (see Bud-Light ad) and beer pong from college. That and irresistible lines like “his blood smells like cologne” help position Dos Equis as the more aspirational choice in beers.

Here’s a campaign that’s after my own heart. It’s for European beer Estrella Damm. The tagline reads “Good times never end when you have something to remind you of them.” It seems that the objective was to associate the beer with the memory of moments like a short-term romance on a backpacking trip. I’ll drink to that!

Heineken has always promoted itself as a more upscale and respectable choice. And I think it’s always worked, even though I don’t typically reach for it myself. That said, I do like their 12 oz. keg cans. Heineken’s most recent campaign takes the classy message and replays it with the powerful tagline – “Give yourself a good name.” The ads feature guys making bold decisions (like drinking with the scary bosses’ daughter) and congratulating them on their choice. It helps reinforce the message that what beer you choose says something important about who you are, and whether or not you’re gonna sleep alone tonight.

Put Red Stripe in a Budweiser bottle and I’ll spit it out. But leave it in its stubby little lair and I’ll drink it while imagining the Caribbean sun beating down on me. Funny that. This fact is parodied in this ad featuring their central spokesperson – the Jamaican guy who loves nothing more than celebrating what beer can do with his trademark expression of Jamaican joy: “Hooray Beer!”

Okay all you keg-stand-beer-pongers, this one’s for you. The ad for Bud Light below follows the model this beer company has focused on for nearly every Super Bowl and football season – forget about your product features and focus on the simple message that guys will do almost anything for your beer. The strategy which seems buried in most of their ads is the unwavering loyalty that the guys in their ads have for Bud Light. They will build houses out of it, jump out of planes, and even walk around naked for a day just to get more of it. It is easy to argue that the name of the beer involved is entirely forgettable, but the ads stand out for being amusing.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It’s Monday… it’s dinner time

joejdf — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:50:02 +0000

Hmm… dinner time…What do I want?

Hey – I’m into social media – maybe I should consult my peers!

Thanks, peers! This is even better than those Canadian Stoner Bears!

You too, Consumerist.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Brand Champion(y)

joejdf — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:11:50 +0000

Well, it’s the dog days of summer once again, and not the adorable, bring-you-your-pipe-and-slippers kind of dog, either. Between flight attendants flipping out, fat people flipping out, and that faccacta oil spill, everybody’s flipping out.

Fortunately, K-Swiss is doing it in a good way.

Now, hard as this may be to believe, I don’t think crazy-for-the-sake-of-crazy really gets you anywhere (I tried it in high school).

But.

If you’re K-Swiss in a Nike/Reebok world? Maybe you don’t follow the Athletic Gear Rule Book, which clearly states:

2(A): The Company Shall Market Product By Displaying Incredible Athletes. The Implied Promise Shall Be: “If You Buy This Stuff, You’ll Be Just Like (INSERT ATHLETE NAME HERE.)“

Maybe you realize there’s a big ol’ world out there filled with has-beens and never-really-gave-a-crap-beens. Maybe you think, “The people who snuck behind the gym to smoke during P.E. class need shoes, too.”

It’s just crazy enough to work. Godspeed, K-Swiss. (Tubes!)

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Three Steps to Getting More Traffic by Writing Less

joejdf — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:22:54 +0000

Ever wonder where you’re supposed to find the time to promote your blog?

If you’re blogging in your spare time, it can seem impossible. You’re already struggling just to publish a post every weekday, and sometimes you can’t even manage that. You want to work on your SEO, twitter following, and relationships with popular bloggers, but you also have a job, family, friends — responsibilities that are just more important.

And so you wonder: should you just keep going, doing the best you can? Or is there a strategy you can use that doesn’t require so much time?

I’ve been researching that question for the last couple weeks, and after chatting working with more than a dozen bloggers, trying different things, I think I’ve found one. As it turns out, the answer isn’t doing more. It’s doing less.

Let me explain.

Step One: Publish only one blog post per week

Whoever said you have to publish a blog post every weekday? Nobody, as far as I can tell. It’s just what everyone does, and so most of us assume it’s the only way to do it. But it’s not.

If you’re strapped for time, there’s nothing wrong with cutting back on the number of posts you publish each week. Your readers might even be grateful. Most people have so much to read that they don’t have time to keep up with all of your blog posts, and they feel bad about it. By cutting back, you make it easier for them to stay a subscriber.

So how many posts should you publish, exactly? There’s no set number, but here’s a suggestion: start with one really good post per week, and if you have time, work your way up.

The key word is “good.” One well-written, well-thought-out blog post can get you more links and traffic than hundreds of hurried ones. Some writers are faster than others, but in general, if you’re spending less than two hours on most of your posts, you’re probably going too fast. Cut back the quantity, and focus on quality.

By itself, this will often double or triple your traffic. But it also does something else: it frees up time to focus on promotion.

Step Two: Publish one guest post per month on popular blogs

As you’ve probably seen, there are hundreds of strategies for promoting a blog. In an ideal world, you would use them all, digging dozens of channels for traffic to come flowing in. There’s only one problem: you don’t live in an ideal world. And neither do I. Even if you were working on your blog full-time with a dozen employees to help you, you couldn’t do everything.

So don’t try. Instead, focus on one strategy, and get really good at it. My advice: start with guest blogging. Here’s why: pretty much every other traffic strategy depends on you having connections.

To make SEO work, you need links from trusted sites. To make Twitter work, you need to get retweets from people who have a lot of followers. To make social bookmarking work, you need connections with social media power users who can bring you dozens or even hundreds of votes. And that’s hard when you’re a beginner, because you don’t have any of those connections.

In my opinion, it’s far, far easier to establish relationships with influential people first, and then use those connections to fuel the other strategies. If you can publish just one guest post per month for popular blogs, at the end of the year, you’ll have made connections with 12 very influential people who can help you grow your blog. That’s not going to give you 100,000 subscribers all by itself. But it will give you a nice foundation, and it’s one you can build on.

Step Three: Slowly start doing more posts and promotions

Once you start getting results, I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to expand your efforts. Everyone is more motivated to work on something that’s working. If you land a guest post on a big blog and pick up a few hundred subscribers, you won’t have to push yourself quite so hard to work on your next post. You’ll want to do it, and that makes blogging a lot more enjoyable.

You’ll also have the connections you need to slowly start trying some other traffic strategies. For instance, you could:

Publish a special piece of content, such as a free report or video, and then use your connections to get links from popular blogs.
Build a following on Twitter to help promote your posts, and then strategically make a post go viral.
Pick a search phrase that gets hundreds of thousands of searches per month, and then use your connections to get trusted links.

By themselves, none of those strategies are new. Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few months probably dreams about attracting links, building a Twitter following, and getting a first page ranking on Google. The difference is you’ll actually be able to do it. Cutting your posting schedule will free up the time you need to work on promotion, and guest blogging will give you the connections you need to pull them off. It’s a very simple system, but it’s also one that gives you everything you need while investing a more reasonable amount of time.

Is the system perfect? No. Getting a guest post on a popular blog can be difficult. With audiences numbering in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, popular bloggers are justifiably careful about the quality of content they publish. Frequently, they also have a lot of bloggers volunteering to do guest posts, so the competition can be stiff. But it’s not impossible. New bloggers do it on a regular basis here at Copyblogger, as well as many other popular blogs.

There’s no reason you can’t do it too. You just need a few tricks of the trade to help you get started.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Why You Need To Hire Employees With Strong Personal Brands

joejdf — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:26:25 +0000

Have you ever realized that film actors are essentially short-term employees? They lend their personal brands to films as much as their acting ability, and in return the studios leverage those brands to generate box office interest.

Now consider your business and how you hire new employees or foster superstar employees today. Are you still only focusing on the skills and accomplishments of potential employees? More importantly, how are you treating your current employees who are actively building their personal brands through factors like having a personal blog, being part of online communities and generally having a strong identity online?

Many organizations today don’t value personal brand builders enough. Often in the corporate world, as an employee raises their personal brand they’re more likely to be treated with skepticism. Called self-promoters (or worse), these growing superstars are often alienated and driven out of organizations by managers or colleagues that feel threatened by them. Of course, some personal brand builders actually are rabid self-promoters to the detriment of the places they work. But the majority are genuinely strong performers who have the ability to use their personal social capital to be even better at their job if you can find a way to embrace them.

In Hollywood films, the production companies realize that what they’re buying (in part) are the personal profiles of the actors in the film. They NEED their “employees” to have strong personal brands. Sometimes it backfires with high profile meltdowns or personal issues on set. But most of the time it works and everyone makes money. Your business is no different.

In the future, the brands that succeed will be the ones who employ the people who have the most social capital. Your next hire should be someone who not only has the right skills, but also a rapidly growing personal brand. The success your business can have in the social media era may depend on it.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Make Your Readers Love You: 5 Lessons from Pixar

joejdf — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:27:45 +0000

I love Pixar. Everyone loves Pixar. I remember when Toy Story came out 15 years ago. I heard the buzz. I was prepared not to like it. I loved it. And I’ve loved every movie they’ve come out with sense. And so has just about everyone else.

How does Pixar do it, again and again and again? Follow these five steps and eliminate the limits on what you or your business can achieve.

1. Be consistent and build trust

Toy Story 3 is now in theaters, continuing an impossibly solid 11-film winning streak — throughout its history, each of Pixar’s movies has debuted at the number one position in ticket sales.

From the first film to this newest, Pixar never stepped sideways. Their second film, A Bug’s Life, is probably their least appreciated, but still wonderful. Cars is my own least favorite, but it still entertained me. Plus, I’m pretty sure anytime Mattel needs money, they can just churn out another fleet of Cars characters.

2. Take the time to do things right

Toy Story defined the world of mega-budget digital animation and they did it, and continue to do it, by being perfectionists. I’m not a digital artist, but I am a story teller and know what it takes to create a good story. A lot of hard work, and keeping yourself on the hook until you’re sure it’s right.

According to a June 2010 article in Wired, the average frame of animation of Toy Story 3 took seven hours of computing time. There are 24 frames in a second of movie footage. Pixar would rather be late than shoddy. In a culture where we have timers at the drive-thru, guaranteeing the opportunity to deliver high blood pressure and heart disease in under 60 seconds, that type of care is rare.

And audiences know it.

3. Tell a story that connects

Pixar has always understood something that most studios can’t seem to grasp — if you want to create highly profitable work, you’re in deep trouble without some amazing writers. Memorable, lovable characters are a Pixar standard. From Buzz and Woody to Nemo and Wall-E, our affection for Pixar characters lingers. In comparison, characters in most other animated features seem pretty two-dimensional.

Brilliant writing and the ability to connect leave a genuine, lasting impression on our memories.

4. Know yourself, your product, and your team

Usually, studios assemble a cast of freelance professionals for each project. Pixar houses a staff of writers, directors, animators, and technicians who move from project to project. Steve Jobs, who brought director/screenwriter Brad Bird to Pixar after the studio’s first trio of home runs because he didn’t want the company’s innovation to stagnate, said:

For imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.

It’s this sort of healthy creative environment that allows Pixar to correct missteps before they appear on screen, and achieve something close to perfection.

5. Now, make it your own

There is no one else like Pixar, but there is someone exactly like you.

Do what Pixar did. Be consistent, take your time, put out a superb product, build an excellent team, and know exactly who you are. Your own digital magic awaits.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

It’s Time to Break Your Old Marketing Habits

joejdf — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:08:46 +0000

In marketing diminishing returns come quickly. It’s not a coincidence; it’s the industry moving past you while you fail to evolve.

A couple days ago I wrote a post about zagging when other marketers are zigging. My point was simply that your first job as a marketer is to get your audience’s attention, and if you’re approaching them with the same techniques that other marketers are using, there’s a good chance your message, whatever it is, will be lost on them.

Consider changing things up in order to grow and evolve:

Approach: If something works online then great, but if it doesn’t you need to fix it. Marketing your business online isn’t the same as it was three years ago. Things change and you need to evolve with your approach or you run the risk of cutting your audience short.

Brand: Is your online brand stale? Have you not rebranded your business since the day you started it? Branding online in today’s marketplace is very important. Customers really focus on brand recognition before they make purchases online and a stale, non-branded marketing approach online could work against any new potential sales.

Website: Consult a professional about your website if you haven’t touched it in five years. You might think it’s the cat’s bag but your audience might be seriously turned off by it. Don’t outdate yourself by not periodically updating your website.

The internet marketing space is not an area where you can get comfortable and set in your ways. Failure to evolve will result in brand death, and in today’s marketplace you have to do everything you can in order to really stand out.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Zagging is the Shiznit!

joejdf — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:37:03 +0000

You know that old saying – while everyone is zigging, it’s time to zag. It holds true in online marketing as well, and the search engines know it.

Think about it. How quickly is the SEO game changing? Hint: really quick!

To me, zigging is repurposing content and passing it off as yours. It’s metatags and link building and on and on. And on the surface these aren’t bad strategies, especially if you don’t have the time to think up something really original, like composing content that’s interesting and timely and that people really want to read.

Everywhere I look I see bloggers extolling the virtues of article marketing, but it all sounds strikingly similar. When you read original content you know it. You lean into the screen. It absorbs you. It entertains you. It offers you knowledge.

Cheap, repurposed content doesn’t offer that. And it rarely fools the search engines either. Even giant sites like Yahoo! and AOL have authority domains and plan to monetize staggering quantities of backfill content at lower levels on their sites.

Another form of zigging — encouraging people to repurpose your content. That’s what the get-rich-quick crowd is doing; persuading people to outsource their article-writing to the Philippines, or using article scraping software to create even more content. And it’s a huge industry. Content mills like DemandMedia.com and AssociatedContent.com are growing like crrrazy. (AssociatedContent.com is now owned by Yahoo!)

All this has wanting to zag, and not as part of a cunning marketing plan. My position on quality content is the real me. It’s fun to take a contrary position when you believe in it. And when you know you are right. : )

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Mmmm… Unexplained bacon.

joejdf — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:31:01 +0000

Car payments? Bacon? Car payments? Bacon. I have a new hero. Two actually and they are Rhett and Link at said agency.

About the Author: Joe Franklin is a copywriter and online marketing strategist that lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.