custom content Archives - Page 3 of 4

July 27, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Five Things You Might Have Missed!

If you think the Google Fiber project is a breakfast cereal and you don’t know how to make white trash beer cans into works of art, you need us. Our Five Things You Might Have Missed has the hottest news in online video creation, digital engagement and branding news to ensure you’ll always know what your cool coworkers are talking about.

1.) Searching for Cable: Google already controls the way you find things on the Internet. Now the company wants to control how you get onto the Internet. This week, Google announced as part of its Kansas City-based Google Fiber project that it would launch its very own super-fast Internet service — which includes becoming a cable TV provider. The $500 million dollar project is a big game changer for Google and for cable and Internet providers. It’s big branding news for sure… but what makes it list worthy is the twist: Google Cable and Internet will only be available in communities that come together and rally enough interest to have it brought to their town. Nicely played, Google.

2.) Talked-about Trailers: Sensing that we were already over the drama and sheer crappiness surrounding most summer films, Hollywood has moved forward in pushing big-budget fall films with spectacular trailers on the verge of going viral. This week alone saw the release of online videos for two highly-anticipated films. Trippy sci-fi fest Cloud Atlas got an online documentary video which sent film buffs into a frenzy while The Life of Pi had fans of the book tweeting like crazy. Movie trailers are now able to reach more viewers and generate more discussion thanks to online videos and social media, and these two clips prove we’re still crazy about the movies.

3.) Blue Ribbon Winners: PBRart.com is the latest social and digital campaign from Pabst Blue Ribbon. The beloved beer of hipsters and hillbillies alike has brewed up an art contest in search of America’s next great beer can artists. Ironic, cool and inventive, PBRart.com is digital engagement at its most creative.

4.) See Things Differently: We were inspired by this clever visual campaign by Owl Optics Glasses which turned urban windows into chic eye-wear with the help of a big fake nose. This ambient, outdoor advertising not only got noticed by passersby but also translated into increased web traffic. According to I Believe in Advertising, the brand’s website, Facebook and Twitter traffic increased by more than 420 percent.

5.) Game Time: Rounding out our fivesome is the “Could You Be a Medalist?” game from The Guardian. Think old school arcade action in a branded Olympics-themed advergame. It’s our favorite at-work timekiller of the summer.

July 19, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Say What You Meme, Meme What You Say

It’s a social media fact of life that we just have to deal with: everybody memes. We’re all guilty of it. You might be asking “What’s a meme?” For starters, know those crass 1950s-esque cards on Facebook? Those are memes. The pictures of cats speaking in jumbled grammar? Also memes. Images of celebs with snarky sayings? Totally memes. Texts from Hillary, sad Keanu, everything Ryan Gosling — all memes. Basically, memes are the inside jokes we share with one another online… and the world has gone meme crazy. Naturally, many brands are tapping into the forwarding power of memes and using them in social media marketing. But is it a good idea or a flash in the pan?

Well, memes themselves aren’t going anywhere. Our love for sharing this kind of crap (we mean that in a loving kind of way) really took off in the 1970s. Remember the “Hang in There!” kitten posters from your dentist’s office? Our collective desire for sharing a smile or laugh is something powerful and timeless — and something any sized company can tap into. We like the clever memes that chicken producer Red Bird Farms posts on its Facebook page, for example. The company wisely posts funny images like this one that transcend social media marketing and traditional Facebook advertising.

The rules of thumb for achieving meme marketing gold are as follows: Above all, make sure it’s funny with a great image. Next, make sure it works with your brand. Red Bird Farms, Oreo and others are able to get their memes shared and talked about on Facebook and Twitter because they cleverly tie in their products with a humorous message. In other words, don’t pick something funny that has nothing to do with your company. Lastly, go for originality — or at the very least underused — material. It’s a tall order to put something on Facebook everybody under the sun hasn’t already seen, but we say try to challenge yourself. There are a few great sites that can help you make original memes and others that will help you identify some of the most popular.

In the end, memes are a fantastic way to give your social media followers something to laugh about that breaks up the monotony of strict sales messages. So gather those crazy kitty pictures and go get your meme on!

July 16, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Blog Like the Big Brands: Sony

A massive global electronic and entertainment brand like Sony should have a smooth digital presence and great-looking custom content, right? I mean, it’s Sony. It’s an easily-recognized, iconic technology company; if the folks there can’t figure out online marketing, we’re all in trouble. Thankfully, Sony has digital branding nailed shut. Its blog is a sleek, sharp and surprisingly smart corporate blog that might just inspire your own company’s blogging.

The first thing visitors to the blog notice is that Sony proudly and repeatedly wears the tag “make.believe.” Right off, followers know that this blog is devoted to Sony’s wide array of products and the brand is inviting us to use them and read more about them. From the Walkman to the DVD player to the PlayStation and beyond, Sony has been on the forefront of personal electronics innovation. Therefore, much of the blog is devoted to new products coming out, an inside peek at products in development and tips for using Sony products. The blog even provides some company history and seriously nerdy technical talk, too.

Yet like all of the successful blogs we talk about in these pages, Sony’s copy is conversational, smart and easy to read. The blog talks to you and not down at you — a major mistake many tech-heavy company makes. Instead, Sony acts as the friend who is really excited to show you a bunch of cool stuff. The smartest thing the blog does, however, is keep the focus on its products. Sure, there are posts about ComicCon and other newsworthy events, but the brand name is still present and so are Sony products. Even the photos are a Sony-created affair. Each image on the site is great-looking and magazine-ready, which is a smart move for a company for which much of their bread and butter still comes from the sales of digital cameras.

And that brings us to our takeaway tip from Sony: When it comes to corporate blog creation, there’s a delicate line between informing and connecting with your audience vs. blogging like an infomercial. Try to infuse news stories with your company’s mission statement and products. For example, if you have a bakery, try posting about the latest celebrity wedding and what kind of wedding cake you’d make for the happy couple. If you’re in the art business, cover the auction beat while talking about similar pieces you have in your gallery. Lawyers, fashion designers, medical professionals and travel experts are all the kinds of professionals who can always find something from the headlines to blog about. The possibilities are endless. But just make sure you do as Sony does and bring it back to your business. Sony’s blog is great example of how a corporate blog can be conversational, informative and great looking while still showing off its products.

July 6, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Five Things You Might Have Missed — Video Edition!

For many brands, online video creation has quickly become a main component of a great custom content campaign. Video campaigns are so sought after, we’ve decided to devote an entire “Five Things You Might Have Missed” to branded viral videos that inspire, confuse and amuse!

1.) McExplanation: Video campaigns can be a great way to talk to customers while showing them what’s going on at your company. McDonald’s Canada launched a “Your Questions” campaign to address the comments and questions submitted by online followers. This highly-watched video shows what goes on behind the scenes at a McDonald’s photo shoot. The video demystifies why the burgers on TV look so different than the ones in the store while positioning McDonald’s as a brand that’s not afraid to talk to its consumers.

2.) Helping Grandma Hilda: Sometimes video content can be a great supplement to a social media campaign. Take this video from Renault for example. The French car company had a successful Facebook storytelling campaign this spring with the tale of Grandma Hilda, an 80-year-old who decided to give her Renault 4 away to the brand’s Facebook friends. The only problem? She lost the keys. Fans “helped her look” for the keys with tags on Facebook photos, and the winner who found them got Grandma’s car. The video here helps keep the story alive while showing the company’s success with the campaign.

3.) Shiny Surface: Videos are also great brand hype machines. A slick video with the right music can be more effective than a thousand print campaigns. Racking in over 6 million views in a matter of days, this spot for Microsoft’s tablet dubbed the Surface is proof positive of just that. Like the best teaser campaigns, Microsoft has given tech nerds just enough shots of the product to drool over while not bogging the video down with too many bells and whistles.

4.) Hugs: Clever is the name of the game for branded videos that get watched over and over again. This spot for Oxelo brake-equipped rollerblades has clever in spades. It features a soft, melancholy song and shots of people hugging things: poles, trees, strangers, cars. The twist? These are all rollerbladers with no brakes.

5.) Kisses: Lastly, we round our video-tastic list with a commercial from Coca-Cola which features that ever-coveted “aww” factor. The video shows security cameras around the world that capture friendly crimes like “stealing kisses” and “friendly gangs.” Nobody does feel good viral video like Coke, and this one is really “aww-inspiring.”

May 31, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Anybody Can Be a Viral Blogging Sensation. Even a Nine-year-old.

You might think that we here at Brandsplat spend all of our time ghostwriting and blogging for business and are left jaded and uninspired at the end of the day. But you’d be wrong! Every so often, a story about blogging comes along that truly puts a smile on our faces and reminds us how powerful and effective blogging really is. So thank you, Martha Payne, for being the most recent story.

Martha Payne is a nine-year-old from Scotland who started a little blog in the beginning of May. NeverSeconds chronicles Payne’s daily lunches and life at her primary school. The blog was born after Payne grew frustrated with the size and quality of the lunches served in her cafeteria. Each blog post features a picture of the day’s lunch and its ranking on her Food-o-meter. Payne lists each entrée’s number of mouthfuls, courses and pieces of hair found (mercifully zero so far).

Her honest critique of school lunches has attracted worldwide media attention and more than one million views. Just by blogging about what she saw and experienced, Payne tapped into the hot global topic of school lunches and childhood nutrition. Celebrity chef and school lunch advocate Jamie Oliver congratulated Payne, the BBC interviewed her and local school administrators put school lunches at the top of their agendas. All of this in under a month! What’s more is that Payne has fans from all over the world. Kids from Spokane to Taiwan send her photos of their lunches. Payne, like any great blogger, has a story that audiences can relate to and identify with.

Payne’s readership and instant success are not the norm, as most grumpy custom content specialists will tell you. It usually takes time and planning and lots of content (things we can help you with, by the way). But the thing is you’ll never know if your blog will be a sensation until you actually create it! Writing about the business you’re passionate about might not get you Payne-sized publicity, but you won’t know until you try.

May 22, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

7 Quickie Content Solutions!

Here’s a common scenario in the digital era: You’ve just whipped up your new business and you’ve got to get your name out there like yesterday. Only trouble is you don’t have the time to design a website and wait for people to find said website. Thankfully, we’re kind of masters at getting brands big and small found online in record time. Here now are ten tips for quick custom content that will put you on the map in no time!

1.) Like Pages at Lightspeed: While not everybody loves the ever-commercially-bent evolution look of Facebook pages, it can’t be argued that setting up a page for small businesses is faster than ever. We recently put together a Like page for a comedy group in less than 15 minutes and the Likes came rolling in immediately.

2.) Tumblr Those Photos: Got a visual business that needs to be seen rather than heard? Tumblr is fabulous for getting photos of what you do out there in a timely manner. No waiting to load or formating required, Tumblr blogs can serve up feasts for the eyes in mere moments. Here’s one we put together for a local frame shop in a few minutes that is currently getting re-blogged while showing what the company does best.

3.) Tout it Out Loud: Tout is the video status updating site that lets brands and individuals say it on camera. The fairly new platform is a hit with celebs, sports heroes and CEOs. Tout puts your face out there in minutes and is growing like crazy.

4.) Make a Mini-series: Instead of vomiting out a 3,000-word blog post that no one will ever read, how about chopping that sucker up and serving it in bite size portions that can be doled out over the course of several posts? A blog series is a great way to fill up a week’s worth of writing without having to search high and low for topics, saving you time and your readers from boredom in one fell swoop.

5.) Tweet and Repeat: Twitter is a super-fast way for a newbie brand to get its message out. Using 140 characters, new companies can say, “Hello! We’re here!” without using up a whole bunch of man hours. Also, Twitter’s excellent new search features make it easier than ever to find folks tweeting about the same things you are.

6.) Get On Google+: If you’re already on Google+, setting up a page takes minutes and the page in question gets the marketing moxie and search engine power of Google right behind it. I personally set up two a week ago and it took less than 30 minutes.

7.) Give ’em Something to Watch: Videos (only the ones which relate to your industry, of course) are great filler for an empty blog and website. Original videos take time to make, so until you get your film-making magic on, post pre-existing videos to your site that your followers will find interesting.

May 17, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Do Ideal Blogging Conditions Exist?

The great thing about cooking up custom content is that when you get tired of your cramped office, you can always take your show on the road to your local coffee shop or library. Yet this tried-and-true blogging getaway tool backfired on me recently as I escaped to my neighborhood Starbucks. I’m not finicky and I can usually write in loud places with lots of distractions. Some of my best writing sessions went down at a noisy and dramatic all-night laundromat in East Los Angeles. Yet for some reason, this Starbucks on this day was blogging hell. Blasting reggae, an older gentlemen who appeared to be speaking into a megaphone to everyone who walked in the door and a never-ending series of annoying beeps coming from God knows where were just a few of the things standing in the way of my blogging excellence. So it made me wonder: Would a picture-perfect blogging environment be more conducive to creativity or am I doomed to distraction based on my own mental condition du jour?

In my years tinkering on a laptop, I’ve experienced both blogging extremes. I used to blog quietly in a cool, dark and totally silent corner of a library in Santa Monica. I found this serene little foxhole fostered productivity quite beautifully. Still, this perfect condition had a condition of its own. For this blogging-for-business wizard, my magic only happens if I’m prepared. I can be writing on a secluded island or in a bustling shopping mall and if I’m not ready, I can expect to produce nothing than perhaps a few witty Tweets about how screwed and uninspired I am. I need a game plan. If I’m just researching and flipping through the old Google Reader, that can happen anywhere but ideally should go down long before I sit down to write. Even just a few ideas scratched down on notebook paper can make the world of difference when it comes to easy and inspired blog writing.

My blogging paradise also needs to be disconnected from the Internet. Blasphemy, I know… but the temptation to fry my brain on Facebook or read celebrity gossip on RadarOnline is too high. So I find success happens when I create in Word or some other non-online program before I post on my blogging platform. Once I hopped off of social media and looked over my ideas for the week, that annoying Starbucks was just as good as my secret blogging hideout in Santa Monica. But that’s just me.

Readers, you tell us — what’s your idea of blogging nirvana? Do you need a special writing destination or can you make the magic happen anywhere? Spill your blogging secrets in the comments section below!

December 28, 2011 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Newsletter 101: The Ron Paul Edition!

The digital newsletter is a great way to strut your custom content, expand the reach of your email marketing campaign and enrich your overall digital engagement strategy. Even better — it’s virtually foolproof; the only way that a digital newsletter could possibly destroy your brand is if you weren’t paying attention to the content and what was being printed was offensive, inflammatory and even racist. Thankfully, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul already made that mistake so you don’t have to! Paul recently displayed some truly dunderheaded brand management (or mismanagement, as the case may be) and we can all be a little wiser thanks to his idiocy.

First off, let’s get this out of the way. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican or even if you vote for aliens. Paul’s mistake is not one of party lines but of a brand lacking any thought or strategy. In case you haven’t heard, Paul is currently in deep doo doo over newsletters he published in the ’80s and ’90s which featured the politician’s signature brand of straight talk. The problem with the newsletters in question is that Paul says he didn’t write the crazy racist passages that are now being quoted by every news outlet on the planet. Paul says a staffer wrote the articles in question and that’s the only explanation he’ll give. He’s even getting testy about it — he walked out of a CNN interview when questions about the newsletters arose.

Keeping far away from the icky content of the newsletters and even ickier politics involved, the big problem here is a loose cannon of a brand with zero accountability. If any of our small businesses acted like Paul and then didn’t accept responsibility, we wouldn’t be in business for long. The main marketing mishap here is that if Paul didn’t write those articles, then he took the sin one step further by not triple checking the content that has his name on it. Conversely, if Paul did write the wackadoodle articles in question, then he needs to fess up and accept his fate.

Either way, it’s a classic what not to do with a newsletter or blog or social media post. We’ve seen brands like Marc Jacobs get bitten in the back by not monitoring who is in charge of their social media postings. We’ve seen business blogs get mismanaged by untrustworthy sources. Companies big or small have to carefully and thoughtfully create content for their brand or, like Ron Paul, pay the price for not paying attention.

Blog Like the Big Brands: Sony

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Five Things You Might Have Missed — Video Edition!

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Anybody Can Be a Viral Blogging Sensation. Even a Nine-year-old.

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Do Ideal Blogging Conditions Exist?

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Newsletter 101: The Ron Paul Edition!

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