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x--daughters-of-darkness--x · 5 years ago

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DELAIN: Chillin’ As Doomsday Approaches

In the band’s press release, you state that Apocalypse & Chill will surprise your listeners. What are some of these surprises you have in store for them?

We always write our music pretty organically, so we set out with every album to make it bigger, better, and louder. But it’s not like we’re going to completely change. We just go with whatever inspiration brings us. However, on this album there are some new elements. We’ve got a real choir, we’ve got Timo screaming, and we have full instrumental tracks, which we’ve never done before. There are definitely some parts where we really explored what we could do differently. And then what I mainly think will surprise our listeners is, especially in the first half of the record, the sound is very electronic, without going away from sounding like Delain. They’re all very much from a pop and electronic side of the spectrum. And I think that some of our fans who like us for our previous material, they will kind of be scratching their heads during the first half. But towards the second half of the album, it picks up on the orchestral elements again and becomes more symphonic. There’s plenty of new things on the record, but I definitely think that our fans will be able to appreciate what we’ve done.

How did these electronic influences creep in? Was there something specific you were listening to or interested in that made you want to incorporate it into your music?

I don’t know. I think that within the writing team, Martijn comes up with really 80s synth parts and I often come up with kind of like 90s dance parts. Those two mix well in our music. But it’s not like we said, “We’re going to incorporate this.” When we meet up to write, we all take some ideas with us, like a verse or a chorus or a theme or whatever. We sit down and listen to it and see what we want to work on all together. That’s how those ideas work themselves into the music.

With these ideas, themes, and lyrical inspirations, was there anything going on in your life or the world in general that catapulted these ideas into the songs?

Yeah, I think so. One thing that’s relevant for the way that we’d written this album is the fact that we’ve recorded it very fragmented. Martijn is a producer who really spearheaded this idea of “let’s do everything in several blocks of just a couple of songs” instead of in one go. Because first of all, we didn’t have enough time to have one big block for writing and recording and mixing the entire album because we’ve been touring like crazy. So, this gave us a lot of flexibility, but also the chance to go back on the songs now. All these ideas come from different places as well. But I must say that over the last few years, definitely a lot of it has been inspired by the concerns about the world today. If you open up a newspaper, if you turn on the TV, you see the world quite literally being on fire. And then if you open your socials, you’ll see everyone living their most perfect lives. There is this great contrast between the two where you wonder how can these actually exist at the same time and is this even the same world? And I think that contrast is also visible in the songs on our album.

The visual of the album cover and the promo photos have a 1950s cinematic movie star theme. Is that the concept or theme behind it?

It was really that contrast between the impending doom that you sense when you look at the news these days and then at the same time the complete projections that is very much the majority of things you see on socials. That was very interesting. Since it is so much about zeitgeist, Netflix and chill, it’s a very 2019 thing. So, we felt like the play on words was really fitting for this album. And then when I was playing with the idea of that title…it’s not like I think of a song first and then the title and then the artwork. Usually when you think of a title, there is an image in your head. Or when you think of the music, you see something, like you can imagine it. And for this title right away, I could imagine someone lounging while the world is on fire. I actually put this image together in Photoshop, but I am not a very practiced designer. We really liked that image. We’ve been also looking for images that were more towards the kind of covers that we usually have, like the more art nouveau/romantic/goth imagery, but it just didn’t fit the theme and the title as well as this one. What we eventually did to give it that identity and authenticity that my mockup was lacking, is we gave it to this collage artist. She works really analog. She cuts up images and papers and she reworked the image into what is now the cover and also continued that for the promo photos in the inside. Inside of the booklet you’ll find all of us wearing sunglasses and having different natural disasters reflected in our sunglasses. We put that topic throughout the entire artwork. Not that a lot of people get to see CD booklets these days, but for those who do buy the physical thing, we always try to give it something extra.

How did getting Beast in Black’s Yannis Papadopoulos to sing on “One Second” come about? Did you specifically write his part or realized after the fact that he’d be a good fit?

We realized afterwards that it would be a good fit. We really like working with guest musicians. It’s always a very nice surprise to see what other people, other creatives come up with when they listen to your music. Yannis, we’ve been in touch with him for a while. We met him in Greece. I remember during an after party at a show he taught me a bunch of Greek curse words! We had a few songs where we thought we could really use a guest here, we could really imagine his voice there. Then we were at a festival this summer and they played there as well, and that’s I think when the deal was struck. We gave him a choice. We had three songs where he could imagine it. We always try to give our guests an amount of freedom, so they can really make it their own.

The video for “Burning Bridges” has such cool visuals and beautiful scenery. Where was that shot, and how did the concept and the characters come about?

It was filmed in Snowdonia, which is a gorgeous part of Wales. We filmed it with the company Video Inc., which is a company that we’ve actually worked with for four different videos in one year. In 2019, we did four videos with them, including “Ghost House Heart.” The idea behind “Burning Bridges” for me lyrically was really that the protagonist of the song keeps leaving his surroundings in order to get away from the negative energy there—the negative energies are following him. The real question is, are those negative energies actually coming from your surroundings or are you the one bringing them? And then leaving and burning your bridges behind you will solve absolutely nothing. That was the idea that we wanted to work with for the video as well. What I really like about Video Inc. and how they work is we’ve had in the past where we pitched a song to other video companies and they came up with all these ideas that didn’t fit the song at all. And then we thought, “Oh, we have to give him some more input.” So, any images or ideas that we have with the themes, we send them over, but sometimes then people just say, “Okay, we’ll do that.” And what I really like about Video Inc. is they take the idea and then they go over it. They’re the video makers, that’s their expertise, and they give their own twist to it. “Burning Bridges” is definitely one of the most dramatic ones of the four videos, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

You’re the frontwoman and the main focal point of the band, but the album closer “Combustion” is a cool instrumental that gives the rest of the band a chance to shine. Was this a song specifically created as an instrumental or music that you had trouble finding words for it?

It wasn’t meant to be a song with lyrics ever. Actually, this song was written by Timo and I’m sure that Joey also had a say in it because his drumming parts are very prominent. They actually started performing this song as a showpiece Joey had at his graduation at music school, and they performed it there. We really loved that song and that performance. Another thing is when we write songs for Delain, we really like pop structured songs. None of us in the band are ego trippers, none of us try to show off what we can do. We just do what the song needs, but on this track, they really get to shine. And I think that it’s really cool to give them that moment to shine because we have some really fantastic musicians in the band and they play very functional parts in the regular songs. So, I think that this is a great opportunity for them to show what they’ve got. Also, this is an egocentric reasoning, but for me, a lot of the songs have become much harder to sing. I really appreciate the two minutes of taking a breath during the shows! I think that on the album Apocalypse & Chill, that song for me, represents the explosion, the combustion, the apocalypse itself, if you will. I think it’s got a very symbolic function on this record.

What’s the music scene like in the Netherlands? You’re a very well known international touring band, but what was your humble beginning like?

Delain is a little bit of an odd example in that case because Martijn had rolled out of Within Temptation, who were at their breakthrough, and he had so many well known guests on this album that he wrote and that took a long time. There was a lot of work that went into that, and he had a whole big business plan that he used to get to the labels as well. But we got into that label straightaway for the first record because of all that hard work that Martijn had already put into it and the planning he did and the whole set up of the project. But, if I look at the scene that I was in before I got involved with that, the Dutch metal scene is a very small scene. Everyone knows each other, everyone is in everybody’s bands. I was I think in four bands at that moment. I was in a band, a guitarist in that band was doing a project, and I was in that project and then Martijn did arrangements for that project. And that’s where he heard me. So, he asked me for his project. I know that’s a very confusing sentence, but that may be a good representation of the Dutch music scene. It’s very interesting because a lot of metal comes from the Netherlands and actually a lot of symphonic metal comes from the Netherlands. But you would never tell if you looked at the Dutch mainstream music media. I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s not exotic enough for us, or maybe it’s because it’s too exotic. The Dutch popular music is basically just dance and hip-hop. And I have nothing against dance and hip-hop, but sometimes it’s weird to me. I do these Dutch guest things and there will be people from multiple genres, and I will always be the one with the most followers on Instagram and Facebook. And they will be like, “But we don’t know you!” And that’s very typical for Holland, I think. Music that is very well known internationally is not really well known in the Netherlands itself. On the other hand, it also has its benefits because I bet that even if Delain would have a massive hit in the genre that I could still go grocery shopping without people recognizing me!

Delain has been around for 18 years and you have this new album out and upcoming gigs for the next few years. What are you looking forward to the most in the near future?

We have already reached so many things that we wanted to reach with Delain. It’s been really amazing. It’s been an absolute roller coaster. Martijn and I do most of the work behind the scenes, and we’re a really tight team and we both have started talking about how we might want to start doing some things outside of Delain every now and then. I think our biggest goal for now is to really find a balance and do anything in order to keep making beautiful music together. Because if I look at what we’ve done in the past, if I look at the album that we made now, I’m just really, really proud. It is really a product of our team. The sum is more than its parts, so to speak. I just really hope that we can keep doing that and make a lot more beautiful music and hope that people keep enjoying it. Delain has been around for 18 years and you have this new album out and upcoming gigs for the next few years. What are you looking forward to the most in the near future? We have already reached so many things that we wanted to reach with Delain. It’s been really amazing. It’s been an absolute roller coaster. Martijn and I do most of the work behind the scenes, and we’re a really tight team and we both have started talking about how we might want to start doing some things outside of Delain every now and then. I think our biggest goal for now is to really find a balance and do anything in order to keep making beautiful music together. Because if I look at what we’ve done in the past, if I look at the album that we made now, I’m just really, really proud. It is really a product of our team. The sum is more than its parts, so to speak. I just really hope that we can keep doing that and make a lot more beautiful music and hope that people keep enjoying it.

#Charlotte Wessels #Delain #2020 interviews

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claricelowww · 5 years ago

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#FORWHAT (Part 2)

As mentioned in the Part 1 post, it runs as an interactive social media campaign. The concept of the campaign is to turn it into a competition / giveaway of sorts, getting the customers to fill in the blanks on their own with positive things that they want to MOVE for.

It would mainly take place on social media platforms such as Instagram (@asicsmalaysia) and Facebook (ASICS / ASICS Running Club Malaysia). Each post would consist of 3 visuals from ASICS - the thumbnail (Visual 1), the fill in the blank (Visual 2), and the recommended shoe and beneficial factors of said shoe (Visual 3).

For example, the visual would be “RUN FOR ___” and the customers would then have to fill in the blanks with their answer, and share their story/journey. After that, they would have to repost it on their social media with the #FORWHAT and tag @asicsmalaysia in order to submit their response. The people with the best caption and story would then be chosen to win the specified pair of shoes that have been recommended for that particular activity. The shoe recommendation also serves a second purpose, which is to inform all who see it about the qualities and benefits of the shoes. This would mean that, even if someone doesn’t win the giveaway, they could potentially go and purchase a pair for themselves because of the built up “hype/desire” towards trying to win the shoe.

But overall, this campaign allows the #FORWHAT movement to be one that moves towards nation-wide betterment. In other words, it also gets people to share their stories and inspire other Malaysians.

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 1A

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 1B

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 1C

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 2

SOCIAL MEDIA VISUAL 3

Note: The original images used in the social media visuals (without text or logo) were sourced from ASICS.

CRITS

Amanda Chan:

For visual 1C, the shadow of the text and the human is different (different lighting and different slant position). Be more cautious of the lighting and shadow angles in future. The designs for visuals 2 and 3 are generally alright, but they do look a bit plain. The first image is okay, but second image looks somewhat undone/incomplete, as though there’s something missing.

Eunice Loke:

The campaign seems as though it’s in different pieces and is lacking cohesiveness. Be cautious of the positioning of the campaign, because it would be dependent on the type of image they’re trying to put forward (for athletics, for leisure, etc). The intent of the campaign is good, but the “wellness” aspect doesn’t shine through the flashy visuals. The idea is there, but it needs refining.

Chynna:

Specify which social media platforms you want to use and help people understand it by creating mock-ups of the post on social media (this is because captions will help to boost the understanding / clarity of the direction that you want to take).

The images have been treated well – the title of the campaign hidden in the shadows looks nice (in the posters and social media visuals). A suggestion would have been to try playing with typography (some of the titles were upright, but it was suggested that they be made italic in order to show movement). As for the informative part of the social media visuals, the attention grabbing part of the message should be made to stand out (WIN A PAIR OF FREE SHOES etc).

Sarah Ann Toolseram:

When doing a real campaign in the future, consider the costs. Shoes being given away like that would result in very high costs. Besides that, the shadow in visual 1C is a bit off.

Basil Cha:

Love the idea of localization. Feels like it could be a very exciting campaign, but it feels too safe/normal still. Look at brands that are super strong on branding (Nike!! <- cannot emphasize this one more, Adidas, etc.). Also, just be clear on where you want to bring your audience to, in terms of campaign direction. I really like the idea of #ForWhat. I can imagine like a video ad of people like saying, “This one for what ah” “For what wan” and then ending with “For anything you want to be” or something along those lines.

Visuals are clean/not trying too hard, but I think there needs to be a bit more trying The #ForWhat copy is really cool, the idea of moving with purpose, etc. and I think it’s also a very challenging statement when Malaysians say “For what” and I think sport brands always push that kind of attitude whether it’s about challenging the norms, etc.

There also shouldn’t be too many words on a social media post. Things you can consider are creating a mockup of an Instagram post, where you can actually type in a caption so your design is in the context of a description, etc.

Damien Chung:

I think your idea is pretty good, as in it does give people the idea of what a shoe does, and that it's not just for style and looks, but it's functionality as well for the user. I think for the interactive part, judging from my experience right, these kind of shoes or brands actually have a very niche market. Especially Asics, which has marketed itself to be a sportswear brand, but branching out slowly into lifestyle.

So, I'm not sure if your assignment has anything to do with targeting groups on FB or some sorts. This can't be organic, it has to be boosted unless you have a face of an influencer in your visual that everyone knows and are a fan of, which would generate more engagement for the campaign. If this were to be an organic post, your organic reach would be very little, since the market is niche. The mechanics are great, which is to increase the shares. I was thinking of who is the one that would recommend the specific shoe for the winner or whoever the other participants are. The downside of it is that, what is recommended may not be what the users want, and opinion varies, so that's something we need to think about la. Perhaps you could also include like a voucher or a code for whoever that joined the contest (include a cap of course) to make people buy it rather than just finding out the type of shoes recommended for their activity, increasing the conversation rate.

The visuals used are great! But I think social media visual 2 and 3 can be less DI and more organic like your other visuals, it's more visually appealing than a blue background. Overall I like the idea! I might use it for my work too (haha).

Another thing to take note off, visuals that feature people are bound to get more attention yea. Or any big brands like Nike or Adidas, that would work well. So when your visual features someone, make sure it's someone relatable and you would know. Even if don't know, local would be good also.

Yaeber Neo:

Campaign as a whole has lack of a big idea. As a consumer, I’m not too sure what the campaign is about. What’s the movement about, what’s the key message, why should we join the movement? It’s very easy for people to turn it around and say join the movement for what? You’ll probably need something else to kickstart or introduce the campaign. For example, put together snippets of different athletes or influencers telling their own story of what they move for and why. Then it would carry forward better to Part 2 of the campaign where you focus on social engagement. Part 2 of the campaign could look at more recent trends on Social Media. TikTok for example encourages lots of movement where people do dance covers etc. See how you can leverage on that. Could Asics have their own song and dance challenge?

Felicia Lee:

Maybe this could kickstart by involving stories of day to day people. For example, the way Humans of New York portray stories of people. Story of a struggling modern dancer or an athlete. Then, followed by the audience to fill in the blanks.

Ida Chong:

The social media visuals are generally pretty good and have a sporty feel to them. It makes you feel like exercising because there is movement in the image. The masking and effects applied to the visuals are good as well. However it needs to connect more, in terms of the entirety of the 3 social media posts. This is because the thumbnail image doesn’t really connect with visuals 2 and 3 (probably because they are VERY blue). If the blue is still intended to be used to to it being the company’s colour, then perhaps it could be used as an overlay with another image or colour. Besides that, you should also take note that if the placement and words are simple then the background needs to have more happening.

Annabelle Foo:

I think the play on words here really added a catchy/playful touch to the messaging since it’s something you hear quite frequently, and it still followed through in reminding people why they do what they do. But also if the first phase begins with #ForWhat, it could be a bit difficult for people to translate that messaging right away. I think there’s a really good potential build-up here before #ForWhat comes in, maybe you could tap into how everyone has a different why to what they do and it may look really drastic but I think it’d be good to capture those differences at the start before establishing #ForWhat? Design could be a bit more cohesive in terms of typography style/placement, but visuals still eye-catching and clean!

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chrisabraham · 8 years ago

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Patchwork quilt stitch your marketing website tightly together using internal links and navigation (every page is sacred, every page is great, if a page is wasted, Google gets quite irate)

Google handles every Internet page separately. Every page has its own unique PageRank and you can’t tell the success of a website based only the PR of it’s Default Index Landing Page. A page that’s deep and abandoned in your website may very well be the most important page on your site. While Google does understand the concept of Site and Domain, every page is scrutinized on its own merits.

Every page is sacred. Every page is great. If a page is wasted, Google gets quite irate

We spend so much time fretting about the number and quality of links that are associated with your websites that we often overlook or ignore how important it is that our business and marketing websites be tightly stitch together, from a series of patches into a beautiful quilt; or, maybe more apropos, take all of those music tracks, those songs, back into the studio and turn them from a series of singles into album. Released 50-years-ago on 26 May 1967, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 13-tracks and 12 songs woven into a single musical narrative.

Link Your Site Together with Optimized Navigation

What’s the solution? Well, your WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Plone, Squarespace, etc, templates take care of some of this. They wrap your core and ancillary content with navigation links. If you’re saddled with a proprietary content management system (CMS) then you’ll need to make sure that all your navigation links are either textual or have text associated with all the navigation that your website designer turned unnecessarily into graphics. In the case of an exuberance of GIFs instead of text in your site title, your home link, and your site navigation breadcrumbs, there are always two solutions: get that designer to be 100% less lazy (slicing up Photoshop mockups into graphics-heavy websites is so passé) and convert those images into stylized text using CSS, HTML5, and Adobe Typekit; or, make sure each of those graphical buttons, links, and headlines have ALT text alternatives (if your site can’t be navigated easily by the blind then it can’t be navigated by Google).

Knit Your Site Together with Internal Textual Links

This is easy but oft overlooked. Even an SEO neophyte knows that keyword-rich hyperlinked phrases are the bread and butter of Google’s algorithm — even today, after all these years and an infinity revisions. So, when you want to offer link love to someone, you just make sure you write something like thanks to Chris Abraham for being so awesome and then link that entire phrase with a link to the person, content, company, or site you want to honor, in this case chrisabraham.com/about/ — this can also be used legally, gladly, openly, transparently, and effectively by using this strategy within your own site (and also between all the sites that you control, including your social media profiles).

Stitching Your Site Together is Easy so Start Right Now

Go through every single one of your pages (there are no pages too measly) and make sure any time you refer to another product, a person, a service, a blog post, an events, or anything that lives in any way on a separate page on your site, be sure to link it there. If you mention “my partners” then you should like to your partners page. While it could theoretically be better to include more keywords such as Services at Gerris, be sure to balance readability with comprehensive keywording.

After you’ve gone through and made sure that ever name, product, service, case study, testimonial, or clients is linked to your respective About, Products, Services, Case Studies, Testimonials, Team, Partners, Blog, Contact, and Clients pages, then consider, during round two, writing additional copy that could include internal references and associated links to other pages within your own site, your own domain, or make sure there are also links and references to other properties you might be promoting and marketing as well, such as a landing page, a page dedicated to your founders or management, as well as key social media pages, including personal and corporate pages on LinkedIn.

Don’t start with copywriting, start with just linking the copy that’s there. It might feel like you’re doubling your work, but once you get those links in there based on the copy that you already have, then you can allow yourself the sandbagging inevitable associated with doing any real revision or expansion of a website, including getting okays from the stakeholders and the lawyers and the management team and the CMO and all that tripe. It’s hella easier to integrate those textual hyperlinks on copy that’s already been approved than it is to say that you want to add entire phrases, sentences, and paragraphs into a page that the powers-that-be have already signed off on.

Don’t Go Rogue

While I am not recommending this outright, you, might be able to do your entire first round of intra-site linking (stitching, weaving, knitting) without anyone at all being the wiser. It’s not like you’re changing the copy, tone, or content of the site, you’re merely making sure the continuity of content is optimized to allow better self-reference and flow. But if you do that, proceed at your own peril.

Take Back Those Client Links

Any time a blog post refers to your client, past or present, why not link it to your client page instead of directly to your client, especially when your campaign is done (you’re allowed to go back into your archives of blog posts and link that content any way you like — you’re even allowed to rewrite parts or all of your post — this isn’t the Bible or the New York Times, this is your marketing and promotional copy, it’s yours to do with what you like).

Google’s Data Highlighter

If your site is connected to Google Webmasters and you’re consistently template-based, you might want to explore Google’s Data Highlighter, which allows you to teach and train Google’s spiders and bots how to understand your pages be they articles (such as blog posts), book reviews, events, local businesses, movies, products, restaurants, software applications, and TV episodes.

Unless you site is especially specialized, you only really need to concern yourself with articles and maybe products.

In Closing

You should already know all this stuff. Shame on you. But not everyone knows everything and this isn’t the focus of everyone out there. Everyone wants high PageRank links coming in from out there — even in 2017. You really can’t control how external people link to you but you totally can control how you link to yourself. So, please start with that today. It won’t cost you any treasure, only your time. And it’s easy and it can be fun, if you’re a nerd like me.

Good luck and go git ’em, tiger!

Via Biznology

#SEO #search #search engine services #search engine optimization #search marketing #SEM #Google Search

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ocdaniel · 8 years ago

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How To Build A Brand

In my humble opinion, I present "How to build a brand" Identity - First step to any brand is to first identify what the hell your trying to do. This will become your logo, website, marketing materials, concept, feel and vibe. What message and vibe are you trying to make? What do you want to have translated to your target audience? This is the look and feel of the overall brand. To get here though, it helps to go through a few things of the mind first. Mental gymnastics to give you that solid platform for less wasted time as you start actually designing things. Avatar Identification - identify who your client, follower, customer or person your targeting is. A lot of people miss this first vital step. They think too big or get caught up with competitors strategies. The concept of "stay true to yourself, stay true to your audience, build an authentic brand movement." You might be able to "fake it till you make it" but damn that is exhausting! How much easier is it to just identify who you are, how you feel is most effective to reach who you want to reach, then let the dominos fall. I think one of the biggest keys to failure is trying to do something you don't know anything about. Who knows how to be you better than YOU?!?!? The hard thing is that there is so much noise in the world today competing with your inner voice that it distracts you from knowing yourself well. It's almost like that 7ft 2in guy that tries to emulate Steve Nash because he sees himself as a point guard. Delusions kill great potential brands. Don't do that. Spend time understanding who you are and go deep. The deeper you go, the more straight your path to get to your desired goals. Before I work on a brand, I ask a series of questions. 1. How did you get to where you got? 2. Why do people like you? 3. What are the top things your followers think of when they think about you? 4. What is YOUR message and what would you want to transfer to another person if you only had a few moments with them? 5. What gets you excited and what are you into? 6. What other brands do you like? 7. What brands do you think your fans wear? 8. What is your ultimate vision of where you want to be? This is a great starting point to help identify what your brand "COULD" look like. Remember, iteration is part of the process and what you start with often will look significantly different by the time you are done. Get comfortable with the PIVOT! Messaging - how do you say everything you want to say to your followers in 3-5 words? It's your hook/ chorus/ tagline. If you were going to deliver a keynote speech, what would you title it? It's gotta be something people can remember and makes sense when they learn more about you. Kinda like "sacrificial love" for one of the most prolific movements to exist called "Christianity" from a guy named Jesus. You have a title that supports your story or message. What is YOUR message? This is not easy so my recommendation is to relax, take your time, and fire away. Just start writing things down. Spit out 20-30 maybe 50 ideas. I call this the message iteration sequence. Do you think Apple Computers came up with "Think Different" on the first go around? Your message might evolve. I mean do you want to force feed things to your fans? What if you start off a guest on a talk show and the cameras catch you say something like.... "cash me outside, how about dat?" and it goes viral? Are you going to roll with it or try to explain that doesn't truly represent you and your brand should be something else? Brands evolve and you should be open to this. I mean the core of it could start off with your story and message but your FANS might demand a PIVOT. Be ok with that. The idea in this phase is to put something out that can get the ball rolling. Nothing sucks more than a lot of potential that sits on a bench. Get off the bench and start testing! Rapid Testing & Refinement - Now that your idea or message is "off the bench" you can start getting feedback to either validate your idea or receive reasons to change it. Don't keep fishing with the same bait if it doesn't work. If you can make tweaks to it, do it! I heard this quote I always use "slight tweaks lead to great peaks!" Truth! The stubborn guy eats the left overs and by himself in the corner. The market moves fast as people are always changing. Move! As you test and refine, you will eventually find something that works. The key is to keep trying. Don't give up.... I was told once, "daniel, people give up... don't give up! Not giving up is half the battle." From my own findings, I see this true more than 80% - 90% of the time. Now, 10% - 20% of the time, the old classic poker song "know when to hold em, know when to fold em" has to be enforced... but during this first phase, don't give up! Innovate, Deploy, Test, Refine. The clay pot always starts off a big blob of brown dirt mixed with water. Build your pot! Eureka - You caught a whale! That's the point of testing... when you catch a whale go HARD! Stop testing. I call this, start wide then go super narrow. Once you figure out what is working, don't waste any time on things what take away from reeling that whale in. If you got a saying that people keep repeating or a vibe you see people posting, you got something! Think, this is when people start tattooing what your saying onto their bodies (this actually happens many times). The whole point of testing and refining is to get to a singular focus you can repeat over and over and over again. It's your brand! Now go take over the world kid! Ok... now that we went through that we can snap back to now. That was a mental gymnastics exercise to show what lies ahead. If your fortunate enough to make it to the "Eureka" stage.... believe me, there is a whole new set of rules that apply there. You can't just sit back and collect cash. You gotta keep nurturing it and treat it like a prize horse. Frequently grooming and maintenance is a great thing to exercise once your brand has been established. So back to identity. Once your process all that above, your ready to start making a logo. By now you should have some sayings you want to start with, brands you like or feel your fans like and an overall vibe that you want to build your brand around. Logo - A good designer can help put some concepts into motion. Fonts, sizing, layout, texture and colors are very important to pay attention to. A good designer can help translate your idea into a graphic that can get you started. I'd recommend getting 4-8 logo variations to look at unless your working with a guru that knows what he's doing. If you got a guru, then you might want to take his advise on what looks good and give your slight feedback on that. Look up how Steve Jobs came up with the Apple logo for reference. If you don't have access to a guru and you have to play your own creative director, I'd pick 1-2 of the initial set then have them do 2-4 treatments each. Play with different layouts, colors, etc. Maybe even have them apply the logos onto marketing materials such as flyers, website mockups, mobile apps, etc. This will give you a good vibe of how it will look applied. Remember, not everything that looks good in a catalog translates well when you actually try it on. Give it a test drive and see how they can treat the logo onto different graphic layouts to get a real fee of it. Once you got it, pick the one you will call home and start the remodeling! Marketing assets - once you have the logo and the initial messaging, you will need to get marketing assets. Here is what I believe you need today in order of importance: Social Media Promo Assets (the modern flyer), Website (the modern store front), & a one sheet (the modern business card). You could do without a one sheet if your a entertainment brand but as a business, you'll want a one sheet. That one sheet will force you to properly consolidate all your ideas into a concise format. It will also be very useful for business meetings, video production, marketing campaigns and new employees down the line. I almost always build a one sheet before doing a website or mobile app. Even if I don't use it, it helps me filter the unnecessary content out. Now that you have your initial marketing assets.... START MARKETING! Now this is where I stop. I went over the steps in the mental gymnastics above so you can pretty much figure out what direction you should go if you follow my school of thought. These are my personal findings over the last 15 years or so after working with hundreds if not thousands of celebrities and influencers. I've worked on campaigns for Lady Gaga, Gwen Stefani, Kanye West, Beats By Dre, Farmers Insurance, UFC gym, and many others.... I've seen it work. Stop wishing and start working! A dream without a plan is only a dream. 👌 I'm just a student just passing along info I've caught. - Daniel

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chrisabraham · 8 years ago

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Patchwork quilt stitch your marketing website tightly together using internal links and navigation (every page is sacred, every page is great, if a page is wasted, Google gets quite irate)

Every page is sacred. Every page is great. If a page is wasted, Google gets quite irate

Link Your Site Together with Optimized Navigation

Knit Your Site Together with Internal Textual Links

Stitching Your Site Together is Easy so Start Right Now

Don’t Go Rogue

Take Back Those Client Links

Google’s Data Highlighter

Unless you site is especially specialized, you only really need to concern yourself with articles and maybe products.

In Closing

Good luck and go git ’em, tiger!

Via Biznology

#SEO #search #search engine services #search engine optimization #search marketing #SEM #Google Search

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