Lion’s RAWR Marketing Has Moved To…

Hello everyone!  The day has finally arrived!

Lion’s RAWR Marketing is now being self-hosted at http://roarmkting.com.

All past posts are present at this new location and new ones too!  So what are you doing just sitting there, come on over to roarmkting.com and “Let Your ROAR Be Heard!”

200+ Views!

So I kind of want to make this a regular thing of announcing when I reach a certain number of hits.  And today I’ve finally reached 200+ views since my blog started September 29, 2010.  I reached 100 views on October 20, 2010 so I’m increasing views at a consistent pace.

Thanks for anyone who has viewed my blog.  Please continue to do so!

Technorati: The Gold Standard of Blogging

It wasn’t until recently that I caught on to Technorati and using it as a tool to drive traffic to my blog and see where I ranked in comparison to other blogs in the blogosphere.  So what is Technorati?  Well, “Technorati was founded to help bloggers succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the global online conversation [and is] founded as the first blog search engine.“

I was a little nervous about signing up when I first learned about Technorati based on the fact that I would see how small I am in this huge social media realm known as blogging.  But in so many places that I read on how to run a blog, everyone said to use Technorati.  Well if everyone says to use Technorati then I might just have to then (and jump off a bridge which is another story).

So just to give a quick and dirty lowdown on how to use Technorati, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Technorati.com and click on “Join” in the top right-hand corner.

2. Fill in the required information on the next page.  They ask for the usual (name, member name, password, email, etc).

3. Next you’ll have to fill-in information on your profile.  Be sure to include your blog URL in the “URL” box.

4. Add a profile picture if you want people to see who you are.

5. Then towards the bottom you’ll see an area that says “My Claimed Blogs.”  Enter your blog’s URL and click on “Claim.”

6. Once you click that, you’ll be sent an auto-generated email explaining to insert a “claim token” into one your new posts.  Looks something like this “ZRGGQEZ2HKY3.”  After posting  your new entry with the Technorati “claim token”  you will receive another auto-generated email saying Technorati is crawling your blog to verify it actually exists.  This takes about two days for the claim to be complete.

7. Wait about one more day, and you’ll receive another email describing how the claim is complete and how it will take an additional 24-48 for your posts to start to show up in their network.  There’s lots of waiting involved if you haven’t noticed.

8. The next step is to “edit site info” by clicking on your claimed blog once it shows up in your Account page and writing a brief description on your blog, selecting categories for it to be tracked on, and site tags.

 

Once all those of steps are completed.  Sit back and track as you see your blog progress (or digress) through the Technorati network.  The key is to be patient for your blog to gain traction.  Within in a few days, I saw my “Technorati Authority” (measures a site’s standing & influence in the blogosphere) jump from 1 to 119.  Continue to add new posts and communicate with other bloggers via comments and this should help foster authority growth.

Although there is heck of a lot of waiting for Technorati to kick in, it is well worth it since Technorati appears to be the gold standard of seeing how you measure in comparison to your cohorts out there.  So don’t stand there, let’s get to it, sign-up on Technorati, there’s nothing to it!

Recharge Your MARCOM Batteries: Pt. 2

Yesterday I attended the Secrets of Design workshop at Fairfax Community Church (FCC) in Fairfax, Virginia (look at initial post).  It was definitely worth the $29.00 to attend (which is an insanely good deal considering other workshops range from $100-$500) .  From 9 am- 4 pm, I was shown the newest and most sought after techniques in Photoshop CS5 by John Falke, Executive Director of Creative Arts at FCC.

I strolled in yesterday morning to the church around 8:30 am, found a seat, plugged in my MacBook and prepared myself to absorb the knowledge.  The workshop was at capacity by the time 9 am came around with every seat in “the Hanger” taken.  Paul Snyder, one of the other creative folks at FCC opened the workshop with a few jokes including how the “holy chicken” aka Chik-Fil-A would be served for lunch.  Delish!

Thereafter, John started things off by describing the bare bone details about Photoshop, such as how to purchase it (without going broke), the difference between Vector and Rastor images, Layers (which I still need to work on) and understanding print which is a problem I am approached with quite frequently when I send things off to the printers.  It’s always important to make sure whatever image you’re sending bleeds over the edges so the printers won’t snip anything important on whatever artwork you hand them.  Remember the 1/4 rule is what I learned.

The session I found to be extremely helpful was one not really involving Photoshop at all but on how to work with clients and other individuals involved in decision making around the office.  The key takeaways from this session was to do your research and be an expert on the target audience you’re producing for.  Also I learned you should phrase comments for feedback as, “how will your users react?” not “let me know what you think.”  That’s like opening Pandora’s Box.  I also learned about a few good resources to use for free fonts and stock images (dafont.com, urbantfonts.com and sxc.hu to name a few).

The next two sessions focused on additional techniques in Photoshop like the Photo Collage Effect, transforming a Photo Wall into a 3D shape and Content Awareness Scaling a new feature in CS5. Content Awareness Scaling is probably my favorite new feature because you can make an image’s foreground objects become close together without distorting the background objects.  Pretty neat.  See it here.

I felt the last session was also super useful too since John and Paul described the creative process behind the development of many of their awe-inspiring sermon series.  Religious or not, you cannot argue their creative abilities are a gift of god.  Look here just to look at the FCC website to see past creative concepts for sermon series they’ve crafted.

As promised, the workshop ended promptly at 4 pm and I was able to be on my way with a bag full of tricks on Photoshop CS5.  I am very thankful my boss at my current job allowed me to take the day off to attend the workshop and even expensed it for company purposes.  This was a win-win for me.   A few tips for anyone who plans on attending a workshop focusing on software tutorial:

• Bring a sweater (it’ll probably be very frigid in the room
• Watch and learn; you’ll absorb the knowledge if you observe rather than try to keep it up with a pro.
• Download all files you need before the workshop (even if its the trail version like I did hehe)
• Get there early; there’s nothing more flustering than jumping in mid-way and already not having a clue what’s going on.
• Tell yourself practice makes perfect; you won’t remember/learn everything in that one sitting.

U.S. Army Online & Social Media Division Gets It Right

Last week while attending the 60th Annual AUSA Conference in D.C.  I couldn’t help but keep visiting the booth for Office of the Chief of Public Affairs: Online & Social Media Division (that’s a mouthful).  They had, what I feel, the most interesting and well put together booth at the conference.  The entire flow of their space was very fluid and you could drift from one area of the booth to the next.  It almost had that museum/art gallery feel to it.

My coworker and I visited the booth a couple times and definitely snagged their educational materials on the Online & Social Media Division.  According to my coworker, their graphic design is very sleek and well crafted and I agree.  It’s nice to see something as regiment as the U.S. Army embrace something as new age like social media and graphic design and do such a good job at it.

The people working the booth were also very approachable and fairly easy to strike up a conversation.  One of the social media people had retweeted what I had posted earlier that week about the conference, so it was interesting to actually meet the person that had interacted with me in social media world.  The U.S. Army Online & Social Meida Division definitely gets it right when it comes to embracing the social media trend.  And I wouldn’t mind working for them one day (wink wink nudge nudge).

Here are some blueprint images of the booth (I didn’t take the opportunity to snap actual photos unfortunately).

Advertising Age: The Wall Street Journal for Marketing Professionals

I have to say as a young marketing professional, I consider the bible/Wall Street Journal of the marketing world to be Advertising Age.  Every Thursday, I can rest assure that a copy of the latest Ad Age is on my desk when I walk into my office.  I’m not much of a periodical reader but I always enjoy flipping through the latest issue of Ad Age and finding out information that keeps me relevant and sharp on trends in the marketing world.

What’s also great about the magazine is that sometimes you get nifty little supplements such as the “Hispanic Fact Pack.” *See picture below.  The “Hispanic Fact Pack” is a small booklet (about 50 pages) that shares the latest figures and trends on Hispanic Marketing and Media.   Especially working on programs such as Army Diversity, I can be sure that this will come in handy at some point.  

The latest article I found to be a great read was one called “Can Paramount stir up same buzz for ‘Paranormal’ sequel?” (read the article via AllBusiness.com)  This article was a great study into how Paramount is taking lessons learned from hand-held films like “The Blair Witch Project” and making sure their hand-held sequel doesn’t reveal too much nor loose that $11,000 budget feel the original films has.  By the way, the sequel was soooo good and I think Paramount should give themselves a pat on the back.  It’s great to see the best practices of extremely seasoned marketing professionals and find ways to apply them to the latest projects I find myself in.

My stack of AdAge's.

Oh, and here’s a little secret about Ad Age.  If you attend enough American Marketing Association webinars (which are free to attend), Ad Age will most likely offer you a complimentary subscription.  I first started receiving my complimentary subscription back in July and have seen issues on  my desk every week since.  I read on their website that my complimentary subscription is subject to end anytime they want to end it, so I hope that day is way far from here.  Shhh….I won’t tell anybody if you won’t.

ZRGGQEZ2HKY3

AUSA Conference: Final Update!

Yesterday was (finally) my last day working at the AUSA Conference in DC.  And I cannot tell you what a relief that it is over.  The AUSA Conference is quite a production and I’m not sure if I’ll ever see such a huge conference ever again.

I worked at the Manpower and Reserve Affairs (M&RA) booth for the U.S. Army.  M&RA implements many programs for the Army community that center on soldier well-being.  It was nice to see a few clients from previous projects I’ve worked on such as Army Diversity and the SHARP program.

It was also nice being able to meet up with my dad at the conference, Colonel Eddie Rosado.  Of course when we walked around I had zero idea of what he was talking to people about at the various booths.  But it was an experience all the same.

Yesterday I had the privilege to disassemble two of our smaller booths for the U.S. Army Chaplains Corp and Retirement Services Office (RSO).  I definitely was able to skip my daily workout after disassembly I can tell you that.

I definitely have a newer found appreciation for the all of the labor unions that build this small city called the AUSA Conference in 3 days and all of the company employees that come out and sell the heck out of their products all day long.  You people are a better man than I!  Viva la AUSA!

See photos below of the event in full swing and look back at my previous post on before pics.