Creating a simple blog can be easy. Setup doesn’t take too much work — especially if you go with a pre-designed template and a user-friendly content management system (CMS) like WordPress. Creating a well conceived, optimized blog, on the other hand? Not so simple. This is Part Two in a three-part series on my adventures in creating, launching […]
Last Christmas, my sister and brother-in-law bought me a web domain. Then, like most good Christmas presents, I promptly forgot about it for over a year. But in February — when my hosting company politely reminded me that I needed to renew my subscription plan — I started thinking about it again, and decided that […]
These days, you can follow a movie’s production schedule for months or even years before it’s released. Director and casting rumors, set photos, interviews with the right entertainment magazines and websites, social media campaigns — no rock is left unturned for a movie that wants to build incredible anticipation. However, there’s one movie-marketing tool in particular […]
I’m not unbiased when it comes to Buzzfeed, the Internet-based purveyor of quizzes, listicles and sort-of-news. It’s not that I worked or wrote for them — nothing like that. Basically, I think their content is about 95% useless. How many slideshows about Beyoncé and kittens does the world need? Hand in the Cookie Jar In […]
What does preparing for a singing competition have to do with market research? Turns out, a lot! Last week, I participated in a pop song competition at Martuni’s, an SF piano bar I frequent often. The competition required me to prepare and sing two pop songs, or songs in styles that were closely related to […]
One of our clients had a bit of a surprise encounter with a Twitter follower a few weeks ago over an email they’d sent. Our client had referred to a user within their target demographic with a generic “he,” pronoun, and the Twitter follower was offended that our client assumed their target demographic was male. […]
Millennials get called out. A lot. In fact, “millennial” is almost a curse word these days. It’s become a signifier of petty, narcissistic behavior and an entitled attitude that’s apparent in our obsessive use of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. “No,” our elders say, “Not everyone wants to know you went to that ceviche restaurant again. […]
I am shocked – shocked! – by the number of poorly formatted web articles and blog posts I come across on a regular basis. Even some of the more polished websites still fail to spend enough quality time ensuring their content is easily digestible and flows intuitively. But there are some simple ways to optimize blog […]
As a copywriter with a degree in English, there are a lot of arcane grammatical rules I have buried away in my head. I’m the type of person who looked up the definition of “split infinitive,” just so I could use it in conversation the next time someone brought up Sandra Bullock (there’s a moment […]
Here’s a joke: what do Dracula, an obnoxious camel, a frustrated caveman, and a talking gecko have to do with car insurance? Answer: NOTHING. Don’t get the joke? That’s cool; my sense of humor is weird. And so is Geico’s marketing strategy. They’re pioneers of what I call absurdist marketing — a strategy that completely […]
