Juanitas Web Spot (www.jack-in.com)

Conformity is NOT in My Dictionary

Michigan’s SEO

February 1, 2010

At the last #tweetea I went to The Center for Michigan was there and gave a very informative presentation and the discussion during gathered further information. I think that observation is the key to implementing successful change.

One statement that was made was that the world knows Detroit it does not know Michigan. So what can we do about that? Well one thing popped out to me immediately. When looking at the profiles of people on FaceBook and LinkedIn and Twitter they all choose locations like. Birmingham, Metro Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lincoln Park and Detroit. Well that is all great no wonder we don’t have a trending topic – in Twitter at least. I looked at profiles of other people and saw DC, New York, Dallas, Paris, London. Simple sometimes simplified. Like you may live in a small town outside of London, but who would know where that is you get used to saying London. So that translates to your web profiles.

So I changed my Metro Detroit to “Michigan”. It’s all in the SEO. If everyone from all over Michigan changed their locals to say just plain straight to the point “Michigan” we could rule our little mid-west section of the Internet.

Track Tweets by Location

Geolocation How Cool is That?

Twitter Stats for Cities Around the World

Twitter Stats for US States

Now here’s where YOU become extremely important. Post your comment here. Your idea about what Michigan residents can individually do to help our state build up a positive reputation and get it noticed. AND we all could do these little things. It will show cohesiveness, teamwork, innovation and a will to survive and thrive if we can pull this off.

Copyright or Copy It Right?

September 28, 2009

marketing

Comments

Image representing Zemanta as depicted in Crun...

And a new trend that has come up recently. This one is a product of a new generation raised online. Allow your content to be distributed (WITH CREDIT AND LINK TO THE ORIGINAL OR YOUR WEBSITE) This drives me a little batty because I start to diverge into this battle in my head about copyrights royalties, etc.

But I must say I can see why this trend is becoming the thing to do.

If the content is mine to give away and I have not been hired and paid by someone else then I can allow readers who appreciate the content to share it, to repost it on other sites. The only thing I would ask is proper citation. Link back to where you got the content from. Don’t change the content or take it out of context.

Then what you can say that I have gained is free advertising and the ability to have a wider audience read my writing. So something I write or a photo I take or a video clip I upload my become viral (please), that should be OK with any person interested in promoting what is on their website.

So what does this mean for the copyright laws?

I would think that under this more relaxed policy that there still exists the citation rule. Also you cannot claim that the content was originally yours or that it was written specifically to be posted on your site.

If it was paid content then there should be a separate disclaimer on the site about clipping. But if there are available and preprogrammed options for clipping then the new rules for content sharing apply. Cite, link, credit.

So what tools are available for clipping?

There are several options for clipping for server administrators who also develop websites, contact me for more information.

Not all of the tools for clipping are for sharing. Zemanta is expressly designed for this and if you mouse over parts of my blog posts that I have enables it in then you will see how you can clip.

Image via CrunchBase

Branding- Marketing Through Logo Recognition

August 25, 2009

marketing

Comments

Lately there has been this mini competition between Google and Bing. Bing using a different image theme each day and Google designing or choosing images incorporating there original name/logo concept.

So does this aid in promoting a product or service? Let’s look a the past campaigns that have tried this technique successfully and not so.

This article deals with the graphic side of branding only rather than name recognition.

McDonalds having the golden arches on your side really gets your foot in the international door of many peoples stomachs. I think just saying McDonalds means fast food. They have achieved international recognition for the arches. you show a big yellow M anywhere in the world and ask people what it means and they will most likely say McDonalds.
Absolute The shape alone has become an art as well ad an advertising icon. There are very few product packaging items that you would recognize at all let alone know from silhouette. There have been more than a few attempts to duplicate this success over the years.
Pepsi The icons well known but I think that actually putting there product into the graphic niche of the consumers mind has not yet been achieved. This is obvious by the multitudes of variations on it’s own products that are still being experimented with. If there was a marked success with reaching that part of the consumer psyche then there would be no need but to sit back and ride the wave for quite some time. They came close but then backed off with the shape of their bottle also. Which they use each year at Christmas for special collectors bottles. idk if this shape could be modified and publicized to duplicate the Absolute bottle success. But I would give it a good try.
Burger King The king is creepy to most people I talk to. He should be dumped. It has not changed my idea one way or another, nor anyone else I talk to other than to remind us that it is creepy. They would probably be better off concentrating back on their crown and lowering there prices than to continue with the costly pursuit of this strange mascot. just the search for Burger King creepy brings up 100s of thousands of hits, ummm that should tell you something. Not going to make me buy more burgers, maybe just give me nightmares and ruin my appetite. Burger King Creepy has also made its way into the Urban Dictionary, but not in a good way.
Nike We all know the swoosh but I don’t think it actually does much these days for sales. The swoosh has run its course. I am more likely to buy shoes with a Baby Phat logo nowadays because the fad of tennis shoes with logos had now been slotted to a group of collectors. The practical consumer buys for style, fad and usability. Nike is no longer the top of the style pile.
Disney Mickey the mouse is also worldwide and strongly associated with Walt and his Disney World/Land
Coke Nothing memorable since the Pepsi vs. Coke challenge was popular. Or even the ‘buy the world a Coke’ Sometimes a good thing is short lived and hard to get back.
Budweiser idk. What happened to the Budweiser Frogs? People were wearing the t-shirts, playing the screensavers, the frogs were fun and kept a viewers attention. Then the classic Clydesdales they are beautiful, but not really a popular mascot or saleable figure, outside of a group of Bud collectors. In general I have just seen a general drop off of Bud ads.
SciFi Honestly, this is a #fail they had an entire community of a transfixed audience with a niche to go with them in the palm of their hand. And an audience that could care less if they modified their genre to include only maybe 75% science fiction. But they changes something that was working anyway. And to the meaningless SyFy this has no meaning. Whose idea was this anyway? There were people tattooing the Saturn like logo on their bodies. It was part of the general culture. Now… True bad judgment.

Image by dannysullivan via Flickr

Teens Twittered Away

July 16, 2009

marketing

(Comments)

I was reading this article (link at bottom) From Time magazine about how teens use technology.

It seemed to me that it was pretty accurate. Based on an interview with 15-year-old Matthew Robson by Morgan Stanley’s research department.

I have a teen, and he has friends, in that group I can observe a few things.

They don’t talk on the phone as much as I did when I was their age, or even as much as I do now.
With the addition of chat via their game systems conversation that once took place on the telephone does happen over the game lines.
They have no interest in Twittering. When they get an account on Twitter they rarely update it. After a few months I would think that their accounts just go completely dormant from their daily life.
They may FaceBook but it seems only as a way to post shared information within their circle. Like pictures that were taken at a party. If they all have photos from their phones, cameras then they can share different views on the same event.

I think that the report by Morgan Stan is pretty informative. But to say that teens do not Twitter or dwindle away is not a permanent state. If I were 15 and signed up for Twitter and started to get a bunch of marketing or a bunch of links to how to articles about various topics like code, business cards, business plans etc. Then I might stop using Twitter or go on a binge block spree.

Also on Twitter sometimes I follow someone that does not give my the information that I need in a relevant period of time. So then I get frustrated. Rather that continue to frustrate myself I may unfollow.

In FaceBook I keep my friends pretty slim. FB is where I don’t allow anyone outside of my real life or would like to meet IRL list enter. I have MySpace to have my fun stuff. And share with people that I have things in common with online. And I have LinkedIn ONLY for use as my online employment reference bank.

The younger audience will have no use whatsoever for LinkedIn. FB will not allow you into their inner circle MySpace is their public face to society and is basically their brag book and more of a one way communication.

There is still hope for Twitter. I would suggest if you want to grab the attention of the younger generation then you have to keep the tweets that you post to them relevant to them. A 15 year old getting a link to a freebie about getting a free issue to a new teen magazine will be more attune then a 15 year old getting a link to a sales pitch to gain more followers on Twitter to promote their business.

In any case in advertising. You must always be aware of what targets your are hitting with your message. This is nothing new. I would just think that in this age of attention deficit and distraction that we try to be all things to all people at all time with all mediums. One must take a step back and look around. If you are standing on the edge of a cliff you would be better off having a parachute than a paddle.

So because of what this 15 year old says we should take not. But Honestly just because a teenager says that they don’t care about advertising dies not mean that they, more then any other group, does not fall into its comforting grip. Just the fact that teens are one of the largest forces in consumerism to be recon with proves the opposite. Teens consume at a rate far faster then their parents who stop to think (sometimes) before making a purchase. Teens purchase largely on peer influence an impulse. Therefore making it seem like the thought was put into their heads by themselves or their own group is the sign of a true marketing master.

My service deals with informing you of what technology is available to you and how to integrate it into your life as well as – how the way your are integrated with your technology may be different from or impact the way that you interact with other people in real life.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1910425,00.html?xid=rss-business

Image by kopp0041 via Flickr

Get Content Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing

The Obvious Made Simple

May 15, 2009

marketing

(Comments)

This entry is part of a series, "How did you make me buy that?" Entries in this series:

Sometimes things are just right in front of your face. I really like the dual saw. As a homemaker who sometimes has to improvise repairs and invent storage, a tool like this can come in handy. Some ideas can be no brainers as well as the campaign to go with them.

An example is What Odor? the sprays infomercial was Billy thinking off the top of his head of a really bad smell. Skunk. If what odor can get rid of, not just hide the smell of skunk, it ROCKS!.

Sometimes we think of a campaign idea along with a product.

Being introduced to the United States in 1981 Skittles was the beginning of my love of commercials. Well, the love of thinking about commercials as a form of art. I remember sitting on the porch. All my friends used to gather there for the beginning of our daily mischief. We had just took a short walk to the corner candy store and picked up a bag of the latest new candy, Skittles. As we chewed on them I remarked to my friends that these were so good that they should be offered to aliens as a welcome gift form the leader of our world to theirs (in a commercial of course). I thought that idea was cute and my friends laughed so I went on, ‘or they should just rain down from the sky.’ Again more laughs. I just kept describing these mini story lines with Skittles candy as the main character. What a hoot that was. We laughed and joked for about a good hour just about these ideas about this great fruity candy. By that time our usual fruity candy was just licorice laces or Swedish fish. We were limited to what the local candy counters had to offer, unless for some reason someone older brought us a treat.

It seems that someone in the ad business at that time also had this vision of Skittles being the food of choice for many occasions. Soon after that little play date into copywriting land the Skittles commercials started showing just those images. I happen to still be very fond of the Skittles modern day commercials, if you have seen the ‘beard’ commercial and the Skittles version of ‘The Midas Touch’ commercial, LOVE IT! The latest Sour Milk . rotfl funny. kind of disturbing too, but in the best way. Where did the idea come from. ? Sometimes they are just there.

It is like the association game, I say brown you say dirt. I say brown and shipping you say UPS. It just fits. and I just happen to think that these fruity little bites should be shared and distributed by the ton. thus the alien welcome gift and the raining Skittles.

Other ideas are not always so in your face. I really enjoy the new DQ commercial that shows the pig dancing on the stage then doused with bbq sauce. It doesn’t make me want to eat pork. But it will remind me that DQ has it next time I am in the mood for bbq or pork. It will just pop into my mind because I found it entertaining, funny and most of all memorable in a pleasant way.

What about Nike said Air? What about Sanders says nostalgia and sweets? what about a clucking rabbit says Cadbury? I would love to see the ad Rorschach that makes us think of ColdStone Creamery. I don’t think they have one yet unless it is an ice cream sundae sitting in a money bowl. But I somehow I don’t think that is what they were going for.

An ad Rorschach is what I call the association that the majority of people will choose this ONE product when shown and image or played a sound or see a TV commercial.

The image to the left would be seen clearly as a few different things but top on the list could be a fox, coyote or a wolf.

So if your ad is clearly putting a certain message into your target audiences subconscious then you should make sure it is the right one. A bad idea is the latest Quiznos commercial ‘put it in me’ is just too graphic and un-family friendly.

An Absolut Vodka advertisement from Greece sho... One of the most famous ad Rorschach is the Absolute bottle. All they need is the shape and you know what it is. I think that is the greatest AR of our time. To be able to link the bottle shape itself to a specific product takes real marketing genius.

So how does a pitchman know when to tow the line with what they say. By watching a small part of their process on the TV show we see that they get a lot of input from a lot of people that they are around. They put together a script and they keep their eye out for bad associations. Like the foot salve would not be good to mention grated cheese. Nope, that would be a bad idea. But the smelly skunk is not any less perfect for an odor fighting product and so the skunk becomes a willing spokes mascot.

If you had to be associated with one image. If ONE thing were burned into peoples minds that made them think only of you, what would that image be?

The Candy Blog – Skittles

Image via Wikipedia

The Gullible and the Pitchman

April 5, 2009

marketing

Comments

This entry is part of a series, "How Did You Make Me Buy That?" Entries in this series:

I find myself watching infomercials sometimes when I wake up late at night and there it really not much else to do while you wait to fall back to sleep. I sometimes will pull out my shopping list and jot something down that looks useful or that I may want to find out more information about.

Will that Mighty Putty really fix that leak? Will my cat really enjoy a manicure and will I feel better about trimming her claws. Can I really get ballads from my entire teen years all in one CD collection for less than $100? WOW. The possibilities seem endless.

That steam machine can cut down my cleaning time by hours. And I can get it on installments.

My mind releases all of it’s tensions, I forget about my daily worries and take on a new thought process. I am now thinking of how all these things can help me. How this latest gadget can give me more time in my day.

Other people are saying that it helped them. I know that these are most often paid spokesmen but it doesn’t matter. I can see how the product is working with my own eyes.

If I get the Roomba it will vacuum my floors even if I am not home. And maybe even exercise my cat. It bounces off of the baseboards in my house and will cover the entire square footage in about two hours, if I figured this right.

If I order this thing I can afford to pay for it if I don’t go to the movies for three months. I can do that.

You start to get giddy with the thougt of what this product will do for you. It will make my skin clear overnight so I don’t have to spend time at the dermatologists office. That saves me about two hours a month.

You distract and distract over and over again this little mini foray into shopping land comes to you, right to you, via your television set. No interruptions from salespeople. And the person who is telling you all about this great item seems to have all the answers to all the questions that you are think of as the commercial goes on. Wait. You tell yourself this is a commercial. They are trying to sell me this. You rationalize. This is not going to be as good as it seems on tv when I finally get it home.

More examples of the benefits of having the SpaceBag are touted. You can really de-clutter if you got a few of these into your closets. This will be great. If I de-clutter I will be more relaxed and then I will be more productive.

WOW! Again they pull you in. Snap out of it. You are only thinking of buying this because you are bored and it is late and maybe you are half asleep and you are probably more easily swayed in this state.

time goes by…
So now it has been decades of the infomercial. You have become a bit stronger. Then they hit you with the As-Seen-On-TV aisles and whole stores even. You walk into your local pharmacy and there it is. THE ROOMBA! OK. You think, if I don’t like it I can bring it back, this is a store after all, a real place. So you go for it. You get the thing home and put it in the closet. Weeks go by and you still have not found the time to try it out. But you know you have it. And there is a little bit of uncomfortable satisfaction that goes along with that fact.

Maybe you do eventually incorporate your new purchases into your daily routine. Maybe at 2pm everyday you let loose the Roomba on the first floor while you are in the basement doing the laundry or maybe it ends up with a bow on it under the Christmas tree for someone’s Christmas joy whey they tear open that paper.

Whatever the draw something made you smile about that purchase, even for just a minute.

Maybe it was Vince who has some odd charisma when it comes to Shammies? Maybe it was seeing those stars without their make-up trying to be sympathetic about zits. You know that there was something about that guy on the Mighty Putty spot that made you remember what Mighty Putty claimed to be able to do. Even though his gestures were very weird and repetitive. Sometimes it is just because you like the spokesman that makes you even consider the product at all. Actually, when I watch the Mighty Putty guy, I recalled these stories of how Hitler used to over gesture to better connect with his audience who often were too far to see him but could make out how he was moving for interpretation of what he was saying. Some connections in the mind just pop in there.

I personally could watch Vince shammy a car or chop veggies all day long. If he were selling shoe horns I think he could get me to want one. He is a natural.

Another thing that can happen with a spokesperson is genuine and complete turn-off. I keep seeing this horrible series of Quiznos commercials. I mean stop with the ads save your money and just give me coupons. Whose idea was this ‘Stick it in me’ campaign? It is offensive. It makes me say to myself everytime that I think of going into Quiznos, nah those commercials are strange and make me feel uncomfortable.

But also another food chain I don’t recall the name because it was not in my area so I decided not to remember the company name, but the commercial rang so true to me, as a woman. It was a model type eating a hamburger, it was very messy and she was getting pieces of the burger all over her arm and licking it. OK. BUT WE DO THAT! So that is the difference between innuendo with cute and innuendo with just plain creepy. It is all in the way it is presented that makes it hit a spot that connects with each of us on that purchasing level.

So how do you know what kind of effect your spokesperson will have on your audience? Well there is a snake oil sales script that you could follow in real time, you watch closely what your audience is reacting to. You just have to have that ear and that eye to capture the little nuances. BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! You also have to be able to change lanes on the fly while traveling the side streets at 90mph. Some people are born natural sales geniuses others are very good at a set script and others are just good at ringing the register. So you have to have all the right players in all the right places at the right time.

In this series I will talk about a specific ad campaign each article and give my thoughts on why it made me buy or not. Or just why I plain loved or hated the entire ad itself, in spite of the product. Also I will be following on The Discovery Channel the new show ‘PitchMen’ and talking about what they show each week.