Pitching a Post

I swear that time did not exist today.

I'm not sure if it was the extra caffeine shot that I am 99.9% sure the Starbucks barista slipped into my coffee or if it was my absorption in the singular task I was given.

Anyway, today I spent a very large amount of time (like, very large) writing a blog pitch for one of our clients to send to the Huffington post, researching how to do so, and editing their bios.

Again, I have no idea why it took so much time to do so.

I wish that I could have done this task before last Thursday, when I sent several blog post pitch emails to various websites with our own post, so that I could have been as well versed in sending such an email as I am today (those were shorter and a little less detailed, however it still would have been helpful).

I don't think I have ever edited and researched so much for a singular email in my life. Ever.

Despite the large chunk of time it most likely took from Nikki's day (thank you so much Nikki) it really was a good exercise. Although, the extra caffeine did not help, as I was continuously shaking and squirming in my seat the entire day.

It helped to "think like Ernest" as my English teacher used to say - Ernest Hemingway that is. Being concise and to the point is paramount, and Ernest was way ahead of his time in his writing, since these words hold even more true during this day and age where people would rather read a Twitter feed than a book.

By the time I sent the final draft to Nikki, it had been chopped in half, tweaked, read over at least thirty times, modified there, altered here - the main objective being to have it relay as much information as possible while also being concise and keeping the reader interested.

The task required much research as well, but most of my time was spent editing this single pitch.

It got me thinking of how if I were Nikki or my mother, this would have taken at most 15 minutes (perhaps I am wrong), and today it took me almost my entire time here to do so. I hope this is something that comes with practice - because while I enjoyed it, I don't think it should typically take this long to write and edit a pitch...

Anyway, another great day at Frozen Fire. I hope that in some way I contributed half as much as I gained.

Also note to self -- never drink a Starbucks coffee unless I have watched the baristas like a hawk to see that they don't put extra caffeine in my drink... I have never struggled so much to sit in one place!

Guest Posting Mania!

I have spent the past 5 1/2 hours on guest blog posting and can basically call myself an expert on the various blogs you can guest blog on and how to do it on each one.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of today was the various rules and credentials that each website required. Most of them were "booked up" and were not accepting any more guest posts. Others required 700 words when the blog we wanted to post has 796. Another did not want the name of our company/any form of advertising of our company whatsoever.

Although I understand that they do not want to just become a website for companies to put links to their websites on via blogs that might not have the best content, but that is not the case for our blog. While our blog has a goal of putting our name out there, it also is instructive and valuable material for small business owners to read. We would be returning the blogs the favor of posting credible and interesting material to their websites.

But, unfortunately, the blog hosts do not know this and we had to edit our blog to meet their needs. Most of the credible blogs I found didn't even accept blogs that have already been published on their creator's website (I guess they want new and exciting stuff...). Cutting the blog down to less than 700 words was not difficult - however editing it so that it does not mention our name anywhere and is not written in the first person proved to be more difficult and jumbled the original message a little.

All of this was time consuming and hard --- today took a lot of reading, writing, and patience but what I got out of it was experience and some great new blogs that I can read in order to learn more about everything.

Some of the websites include Kissmetrics, Men with Pens, Search Engine Examiner, Duct Tape Marketing, Moz.com, Search Engine Journal, E-Junkie.info, Firepole Marketing, and Traffic Generation Cafe.

These are all the better blogs of the ones I found (some of the blogging websites that claimed to know about internet marketing and brand building barely even knew how to brand their OWN business! It was terrifying. I would go through the Annual Haunted House in Grand Prairie or attend my sister's high school graduation with a count of 1,200 graduates than go through some of the blogs of these websites... let alone be in them! I guess these provided a good contrast from the others, showing what not to do..

Anyway, another great day of learning and hard work at Frozen Fire! So happy I'm staying an extra week!

Posts and Press Releases

Sadly, my plan of becoming the next Miley Cyrus because of my innovative breakthrough last week (The Gem Spin), has turned out to be a flop.

Alas.

So, I've decided to return to my old dream of working in marketing and advertising.

After informing Nikki that my dream of making it big in the performance industry failed, she welcomed me back with open arms and invited me to stay longer until the end of next week. (Just kidding -- but I will be staying an extra week so look forward to two extra blog posts :D)

Today was the polar opposite from last week -- Nikki first had me write my first press release (Mom -- aren't you proud? You can put it next to the picture of me on my first day of school!).

For those of you who don't know - so basically anyone reading this - my mother does PR for a living, and has worked for chains such as 7-Eleven and Blockbuster and currently works for Dunkin Brands (Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robins).

Well, just because my mother and I eat the same, write the same, and even talk the same, does not mean that we write the same or that I have some inherent knowledge of how to write press releases.

It proved to be more challenging than I had expected, and had Nikki not supplied me with templates on how-to write press releases, I have no idea what I would have done.

Probably just tap danced the Gem Spin right out of the office.

Anyway, it required hard work and some imagination. Nikki was kind enough to sit with me and explain my errors and although it wasn't perfect, I learned a lot and can now join my entire family tree of PR people. (too premature?)

After this, I sat (for a surprisingly long time...) writing various posting options for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google + (three possible posts for each one). Usually I would need to sit and think about them more, but we'll see how they turn out. I found the Facebook and Twitter (typically more casual platforms) to be much easier and more fun because it felt like there was more freedom with what I could write.

I've come to realize that the biggest thing I have struggled with here thus far is knowing the boundary between being overly casual and writing formally. In high school, I seemed to be the only one who could get away with being extremely creative in a research paper, and during my first year of college, two out of three writing classes I took were creative writing classes in which I didn't write formally or in prose.

While that perpetual gray line between the two still continues to hover above, I will be following as many social media/marketing blogs as possible this year to learn more. More on that next week though, seeing as I still have a few days of learning to do here!

Curveballs

Today was even more eventful than Tuesday, if you can believe it!

I didn't know until the end of Tuesday that I would actually BE in Frozen Fire's video. Remember? The one I choreographed a dance for on Tuesday?

Well, today I had the privilege of walking around downtown Dallas with the Frozen Fire film team to interview people for our explainer video and to show them the "Gem Spin" (that's the dance).

My main task was to be the "DJ" and play the song over and over so that Trae (thankfully not me!) could do the dance for the onlookers. 

People's reactions to a 6'4 guy walking over to them with a posse of camera people following behind were priceless. From time to time, people would cross the street to get away from us, however everyone would stop whenever Trae started to do the "Gem Spin" (probably because it is so fabulously wonderful and is the next Gangam Style or 'twerk'). 

Before we left for the shoot I was able to edit a blog that Nikki wrote, but most of my day was comprised of following the film crew around and be looked at by scared pedestrians. 

It was a good experiment though, not just a fun day out of the office. I'm not sure if I can disclose yet what the point of the video is, but it serves to prove a point - one that will draw more people to our business. 

The funny thing is that while they had me, the intern, choreograph the dance due to my modest dancing background, Nikki would most likely have been the one to choreograph it had I not had a background at all. It goes to show that while interns have to do often weird and silly things, these things would have to be done by the actual employees of a company when there is no intern. I realized that although Nikki and Liz  typically exercise their usual tasks within their fields (if that made any sense...), they would have to (and probably have had to) do some strange things in their careers. 

Not everything is concrete, and life is definitely going to throw some curveballs at me in my career - and this was a fun reminder of that! :)

The Gem Spin.

After a year at school of writing essays about social media, attending lectures presented by the likes of Paul du gay and Stuart Hall, and researching countless information from blogging to client specific topics here at Frozen Fire, it all boiled down to one thing today:

Choreographing a dance.

Yes. That's right, choreopgraphing a dance.

I'm not sure how Ms. Cherrylane, my dance teacher of ten years, would feel if she could have seen me today, sporting moves from The Sprinkler to The Chickenwing in a utility room with my laptop as my only source of self-awareness.

But luckily, Ms. Cherrlane was not there with her ruler or accusing remarks to belittle my gem of a dance:

The Gem Spin.

(yes... Gem as in Meg backwards.)

That is correct, Frozen Fire is launching my career as a hip hop dancer, and Ms. Cherrylane, I will mention you in my 2014 Dance Award speech.

Okay, okay. My skills are really for an explainer video that Frozen Fire is shooting on Thursday (keep your eyes peeled, folks), but little do they know that I am taking this dance with me and hitting the stage!

Okay, enough with my false aspirations of being a famous hip hop dancer. Ms. Cherrylane, if you haven't fallen over in grief, I am just kidding.

I've always heard stories about the crazy happenings that an intern encounters and performs at their internship, but I have to say, I never thought about what mine would be. Not even the infamous skateboarding gang I had to battle against at the Balcom Agency (summer of 2013) could really top the hours of work I put into this masterpiece I created here on N. St. Paul Street today.

So that all happened. ^

Anyway, my last task (the dance actually took most of my day), was to write a few paragraphs on the importance of knowing your customers (as a business) for 45 minutes, with nothing but my own knowledge to supply the information. It was actually really fun -- I ended up writing almost a page and a half without stopping. It allowed me to see how much I know and how quickly I can organize it/pull it from the top of my head.

Of course I need to hear Nikki's feedback, but I feel good about how much I was able to write. Not that I had a doubt, but it showed me how much I have learned here at Frozen Fire these past six weeks (They have gone by so fast!!).

Anyway, it was an eventful and fun day here at Frozen Fire, and Nikki just informed me that I need to wear something for Thursday that will allow me to move around outside without getting too hot... Apparently I'll be in the film too!

*Gulp*.

CTA, Shutterstock, and Landing Pages, Oh My!

I came in yesterday for an extra day this week to work on the project from Tuesday. It was a good thing I did -- I made major changes to the landing page that I think were very positive.
As I said Tuesday, the main problem with the landing page I had created was that it was too market oriented. I followed the examples online too closely and forgot that the aim of the page was to educate and use that information to draw the viewers to the CTA, (call to action).
In marketing, the Call-to-Action is an instruction to the audience to provoke an immediate response (such as prompt them to sign up for an email list, take a survey, etc.).
We had two CTAs for the page -- the first being to make them want to make an appointment with the doctors, the second being to, after giving them all of this information, inspire them to obtain a second opinion with the "Get a Second Opinion" button. By educating them, we showed them that the medical condition explained on the page was something that you should not/cannot treat on your own (which is the truth... we only juxtaposed all of this information we gathered from the internet conveniently next to the "Make An Appointment" button. If you think about it, we saved them a lot of trouble and typing there!
Anyway, I wrote much more than I had -- which were some tiny paragraphs that barely said anything. A major objective of the landing page was to expand the SEO, which meant the more copy, the better. Should have realized that sooner... Oh well.
Anyway, after writing the copy, Nikki showed me how to organize it: Headline>Subtitle>Hero Photo>Subline 1> Copy > CTA > Subline 2 > Copy >CTA 2.

It was quite clever. Placing the first CTA after the first Subline (symptoms), instilled a sense of urgency in the viewer, as they realized that what they have is serious and that seeing a doctor may be the best thing to do. After that, the second CTA was skillfully placed after the Subline 2, treatment -- which explained to the user that home treatments do not show optimal results like those offered by doctors offices -- specifically our client's office. In this paragraph, I also wrote the copy to instill some urgency (not alarmingly) and to explain how seeing a doctor may be the best option. -- all of this was complimented nicely by the "Get a Second Opinion Now" button right below.

I honestly never realized how much work went into landing pages...
And when I say landing pages, I'm talking about the page with the specific CTA of getting people to sign up for an email, get in contact somehow etc. Landing page is a pretty broad term because it really just means the section of a website accessed through a hyperlink and can even be a homepage. A homepage could have the CTA, but not usually. Typically, there is a specific page for getting people to connect with the business. --- at least that is what the internet seems to think. I read countless blogs and websites that went into detail about what should be on a landing page and where to put what, and what to say, etc. There is an art to it. I used to think that landing pages were just annoying pages that were blatantly asking for my money and business, however, when done correctly, landing pages can be both informative and promote revenue.

After doing this, Nikki had me look up photos for the website on shutterstock (which is a very cool website). One had to imply surgery and the other had to show happy people doing something active to indicate that once the customers had visited with our client, they would be able to do normal, active things. The one that implied surgery was really difficult -- it couldn't be gruesome or show the model's faces since they weren't our clients. I found a large amount of pictures showing surgical gloves holding x-rays, however the x-ray would always be of the wrong body part, etc. It was so hard!!

Will keep looking today since I'm not sure how well I did with that...

Most Challenging Day Yet

Today was more challenging than most, but not the hardest... if that makes any sense.
I'm not sure, my mind is jumbled into a wad of confusion.

I should say today was more challenging less tedious than others.

There we go.

I like to think of myself as a creative individual, however when I am in a setting that requires me to be both confident and creative, the creative side tends to dwindle, bringing the confidence down along with it.

This morning, Nikki asked me to design a landing page for one of our clients.

When I say design, I don't mean color schemes, or the question of whether Helvetica or Georgia is the better font -- I'm talking writing copy and deciding the placement of that copy from scratch with my own research and understanding of our client to guide me.

Researching was familiar and fun -- I got to read several well-written and informative blogs about creating the perfect landing page and other less glamorous articles on the medical condition I was researching. I had all my information.

When it came to creating the page -- my creative side struggled a bit. From the start, Nikki asked me to make a landing page for a certain medical condition that our client offers services for. This meant providing useful information about the condition and creating a Call-to-Action on the page.
Instead, I looked at several (rather bland) landing page samples and created one that was much too market based and didn't provide enough information about the condition itself.

Nikki has been so patient with me and showed me what needed tweeking and re-editing. I'm not one to take criticism well (it makes me doubt my abilities), but this exercise, while one in creativity and writing, was a test to my "confidence" -- a test that, I will argue, is almost more valuable than one exercising my writing skills.

I am a strong believer that one can only learn by experience... which at times can be intimidating and can arouse feelings of self-doubt.

Rather than take Hickson's approach of "If at first you don't succeed,: Try, try, try again." , I see this as more of an opportunity to grow rather than an opportunity to let someone down or fail.

I'm still not finished yet, but I am coming back tomorrow  to work on the same project.
Until tomorrow!