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thewhitefluffyhat · 5 years ago

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Feminist Relevant Themes

<-Previous (Introduction)

To talk about Magia Record’s writing in detail, it helps to understand how the game is structured.

Magia Record has many story modes:

Main Story: The main plot, centered on new protagonist Iroha arriving in the city of Kamihama to search for her missing sister. Everyone can read this at any time, and new chapters come out every few months.

Another Story: The events of the Main Story, but told from the point of view of the original Madoka Magica cast. Also always available to everyone.

Magical Girl Stories: short stories centered on one specific magical girl - usually they tell the backstory of the girl’s wish. Can only be watched after obtaining the character in the gacha.

Mirrors Story: A very slowly updated story unlocked by completing many player vs. player battles.

Event Stories: Short stories that come out roughly every two weeks. Sometimes introduce a new character for the gacha, sometimes related to a seasonal holiday. Playable to anyone around during the event (and will be stored in the archive afterwards).

Costume Stories: Tiny story snippets involving a character wearing a special outfit. Implemented one year in and unlocked by obtaining both the character and the outfit in question.

Good

Female Friendship

As with the better side of magical girl media, the game’s biggest feminist plus is its complex female characters and focus on female friendships, including some great examples of female mentors and role models. The mechanics of the setting are even tweaked to facilitate this - gone is the TV series’ lonely, competitive system that isolated girls from each other. Instead, in present-day Kamihama, witches are so strong and plentiful that magical girls are better off forming teams to support one another.

While this change arguably waters down some of the thematic weight of the original (in that this isolation was another example of how Kyuubey’s system is an easy metaphor for other oppressive systems), I find it a worthy trade-off. Allowing for magical girl teams to exist results in much richer possibilities for interactions between characters, especially welcome in a sprawling game with far more narrative content than a one-season anime.

And the game takes good advantage of this - no two magical girl teams are exactly alike, both in terms of internal dynamics and how they interact with other teams.

Doppels

The main gimmick of the game’s story is the existence of “doppels” - a mechanic where a magical girl partially transforms into her own witch to unleash a powerful attack. And from gameplay to story to art, doppels are excellent. They look cool and they’re rewarding to unlock and use in game. From a feminist perspective, I also love the idea of reclaiming witches, the “adult” form of magical girls, into a source of salvation and empowerment for girls* instead of a curse. On a meta-level, it echoes a common magical girl trope of the character transforming into an older version of herself, while specifically to Madoka Magica, it’s a creative way to dismantle the misogynistic implications of Kyuubey’s system!

(*There are supposedly drawbacks to doppels, but that bit of setting mostly serves to make them a ~dangerous forbidden technique~ that shouldn’t be overused.)

Struggling against class prejudice

The tensions between different wards of Kamihama are a key component of the setting, and affect many character interactions. One aspect the Magical Girl Stories are good at is showing how arbitrary and hurtful this discrimination is, and how difficult it is to overcome prejudice once it has become entrenched. It’s made abundantly clear that Kamihama would be a better city without these attitudes - the question is, how to get there?

A variety of careers

Several girls make wishes or have backstories centered on what they want to do when they grow up. What’s especially neat is that most girls ask for the opportunity to follow their passions, rather than having a talent magically granted to them - thus avoiding the pitfall of having a female character’s abilities originate from a power granted by a male character.

The range of career interests depicted isn’t as amazing as it could be (In a cast of 80+, I would love to have more than three girls representing STEM), but there’s some decent variety. Many girls aspire to take over their parents’ family business, for example.

And even some characters who follow more seemingly feminine careers (a model, a chef, an artist, etc.) have serious narratives centered on the skill and effort needed to succeed in those highly competitive fields, which is quite refreshing to see.

Mixed

The many different ways to be a girl

The nice thing about having a large cast of female characters is that it gives plenty of opportunities to show how all of these characters are different. And in general, Magia Record does very well on this front! One aspect I’ve particularly been enjoying is the how the cast has widely varying tastes in fiction. Yes, there are girls who like dreamy romances, but there are also girls who bond over their shared love of a hotblooded shounen series!

Where this falls down somewhat is an overuse of “but look, she has a secret feminine interest.” Sometimes this plot can work, if coming at it from the angle that superficial judgments can be misleading, or that there’s nothing wrong with having feminine interests. But when all the more masculine-presenting girls end up with a hidden fondness for stuffed animals, the sheer repetition becomes rather irksome. It’s as though the game feels the need to insist “but look, she really is a girl!” because the audience wouldn’t believe it without such a trait.

LGBTQ+ characters

In terms of LGBTQ+ content, the game feels rather similar to the original anime and other Madoka spinoffs. That is to say, there are tons of shippable f/f pairings that get teased, but as of the present, only one new playable character (and a tiny sample of minor characters) are explicitly confirmed to be lesbians. No trans or otherwise queer characters either, unfortunately. (Though of course that’s not to stop a good interpretation or headcanon!)

However, as a whole, the game is oddly averse to showing the characters in active, healthy relationships. One of the early frustrations I had with the new character’s portrayal was that the game’s one mutual gay relationship was never directly shown on-screen and gets broken up in favor of more ambiguous teasing. That being said, all the het relationships are treated similarly, either never being confessed and requited or never getting shown on screen. So… I suppose there’s not actually a double standard here, but players hoping for lots of canon yuri content might end up a bit disappointed.

Also, a note on Homura specifically - this game’s version is “glasses Homura,” who hasn’t realized she’s in love with Madoka yet. So despite what you might expect given Rebellion, in Magia Record there’s nothing beyond heavy hints and ambiguously cute scenes between her and Madoka.

Characters with disabilities

A few characters in the game have difficulty speaking. It’s not made clear if this is a speech impediment or something like social anxiety (or autism - I know I’ve seen headcanons for that). There is some depiction of these characters getting bullied, but in each case the character ultimately finds a group of friends who love and support them as they are.

After two years, now there is technically a magical girl who uses a wheelchair. (And it’s a cool custom wheelchair too!) Unfortunately I hesitate to count this as a full positive, because shortly after she appears in it, the character becomes unable to transform and fight for an unrelated reason, so we haven’t seen her in battle since. But who knows - the story’s still moving forward on the Japanese server, and there’s likely to be more content with her in the future.

At the end of the day, though, this is a setting with magic wishes and healing effects. Thus, it’s very common for girls to wish to cure someone’s illness, or to use their abilities as a magical girl to cure themselves, which can easily fall into ableist tropes.

College age magical girls

Yes, really! Although even the oldest characters are only nineteen. However, there’s also a subplot about how two of the nineteen-year-olds are losing power because they’re older, which… hm. The message that we all need to accept passing the torch to the next generation is generally a valuable and good one. Aiming it at older teen girls just on the verge of adulthood is where the implications nosedive into unfortunate. Young girls already get far too many messages that their worth is entirely dependent on their youth/beauty/innocence and that it’s better to stay a “girl” than to be a fully grown “woman.”

The entire reason it’s exciting to see college age magical girls in the first place is that even now, it’s rare to see adult women as protagonists in these types of fantasy adventures. By introducing these young adult characters only to caveat their inclusion with“they’re getting too old to be here”, it puts a very sour note on what’s otherwise a welcome expansion of the Madoka Magica universe.

(It’s also hilariously contradictory to other spin offs in the Madoka Magica franchise, including the implications of the anime canon itself, so… whoops?)

Bad

Lack of diversity

(Particularly racial diversity.)

The only non-Japanese magical girls are from the pre-existing Tart Magica spin-off set in medieval France… and Meiyui. (And maybe Alina.)

Meiyui is a complicated case - her family has ties to both Japan and Hong Kong. Meiyui herself is a fun character, but she also ticks a lot of the checkboxes for a Japanese stereotype of a Chinese person (a la Xiao Mei in Fullmetal Alchemist). As a white person only familiar with US culture, it’s not my place to make a judgement call here, but I’d love to hear from someone who knows more!

The largest disappointment, though, is in wondering what might have been. The Madoka Magica anime implied that there are magical girls all over the globe from every different time and culture, so the game’s narrow focus on one modern Japanese city greatly limits the setting from its full potential. And even within that limitation, the sheer homogeneity of the new cast is starting to get awkwardly same-y.

The arc two’s logo teases what might be girls from several other backgrounds, though, so perhaps this will improve in the very near future. Of course, success will depend on the writers’ abilities to handle other cultures. Which, when given the example of Meiyui, might actually be cause for concern...

Revolutionary Girl Utena, this ain’t

In a game full of decent-to-good backstories, you’ll sometimes hit an unfortunate and very disappointing outlier.

My personal least favorite is the victim-blaming one mentioned in the content warnings. Another low point is a story where a girl frantically diets as a response to another girl’s comments about her weight.

Then there’s the backstory the above picture comes from. It involves a girl who has to drop out of sports because her next school only has a boy’s team - and instead of challenging this situation, it’s the inspiration for her to discover she’s actually happier as a cheerleader anyway. Hm.

This last case is actually pretty emblematic of the game as a whole. Whoever’s doing the writing (the credited scenario team is four people, and from the names at least two might be women?) mostly seems to mean well, but they occasionally step hard into the -isms that come from not actually thinking about the problems with the status quo.

So the game isn’t typically hateful, but it doesn’t push the envelope in any revolutionary directions either. As a result - and it feels weird to say this, but - I really miss having Urobuchi as the writer. Sure, his writing had its own problems, but in comparison, it was at least genuinely thought-provoking. The way that even the adult female characters got complexity and screentime, that whole conversation between Sayaka and the misogynistic men on the train, the compelling exploration of consent and determination that underlies the whole anime – even six years later, these aspects hold up and stand out.

Magia Record is an inversion – far more pleasant on the surface, but without the backbone and depth that made the original so thematically intriguing despite all the suffering.

Next (Other Writing Aspects)->

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #magia record #magical girls #feminist analysis #my blog organization tags #magia record analysis #my feminist friendly magireco review #madoka magica #magical girl genre #magia record jp #magia record na #my ramblings #haha this section is so long #nothing else even touches it #and even then there’s so much other stuff I could rant about lol

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years ago

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FE16 Golden Deer Liveblogging

Chapters 19-20. I feel a bit cheated, honestly.

These two chapters are the same maps as the last two for the Lions, but they were substantially easier. Whether it’s because they’re not endgame on this route or because I’m just more familiar with the game now, neither of them were anywhere near as long or tedious. Instead, both of them continue the trend begun by the previous chapter of using different unit placements and enemy composition to make the maps feel fundamentally different, so good reuse of assets here. In Chapter 19 the enemy has lots of artillery, but you’re encouraged to take control of it yourself to better deal with the flying reinforcements.

Chapter 20 meanwhile eschews the numerous siege casters of the Lions finale for some beefy Crest beasts (the same type that Dedue can turn into on Edelgard’s route, I believe) and a number of locked doors with keys in the hands of various enemies including Dorothea and Petra. You can of course buy and bring your own keys or take a thief, but since those two surround your starting position and are pretty threatening (particularly the incredibly dodgy Petra) it’s better to kill them anyway. Overall though it’s a much easier map, and Edelgard herself is no big deal this time around since she only has standard attack range and no special gimmicks apart from what she gets as a playable unit.

No, the annoying thing here is Dedue, and not because he’s all that hard to keep alive. He charges in as an NPC a few turns into the map only one room from the throne room, and his very tanky physical stats keep him safe against even the strongest Crest beast attacks, to say nothing of physical generics. The reinforcements that continually spawn behind him also keep him from rushing Edelgard too quickly, giving you time to clear her room and the room opposite Dedue of their powerful magic users. With all that in mind getting Dedue to fight Edelgard is no great trouble at least on Normal, and while she doubles him and does a ton of damage he’s doing a fair bit himself, albeit with shaky accuracy.

I had a hell of a time whittling down Edelgard’s HP without defeating her, using Claude’s Subdue combat art (from the lord class) and all the long range healing I could muster to keep Dedue healthy and keep Edelgard in range of death. But then the game doesn’t let him kill her. Yes, what could have been a powerful and cathartic narrative moment is thwarted by a quality of life mechanic; NPCs in this game are unable to get killing blows on major enemies, which in most cases is handy for preventing them from stealing boss kills, but here...gah. Dedue infiltrates Enbarr, storms the castle entirely on his own like a wrecking ball of gay anguish, and then the game refuses to give him his vengeance because he didn’t join Byleth’s army. What’s worse, he has few lines in this chapter and no boss dialogue at all with Edelgard, and if he’s killed his death quote is his standard allied one which implies (unintentionally) that the poor guy is now sharing Dimitri’s hallucinations of the dead. Clearly Edelgard’s route must have blown the budget on homoerotic bonus scenes.

Story/Character observations

Ugh...you know what, I’m not done with this. For those familiar with FE4, recall how the Thracia arc of Gen 2 completely shifts the focus of the story for a period away from the main conflict and toward a more localized one with very different emotional stakes. These two chapters, and Dedue’s role in them, feel very much like that, even without the direct parallel of Finn (and Leif) taking revenge on Travant for Quan’s death. Claude is invested in defeating Edelgard as a means of subduing the Empire, but that’s merely one step in his master plan to bring Fódlan and all surrounding lands under one banner where racism and xenophobia magically don’t exist. With Deer!Byleth lacking any attachment to Edelgard (execution cutscene notwithstanding, which really feels like it should have played only on the church route) and with Rhea still MIA until after the fight is over, the emotional heft of the assault on Enbarr really does come down entirely to Dedue’s desperate bid to avenge his fallen prince. It’s like if the Thracia arc was stripped down purely to the blood feud between House Leonster and House Thracia, only even gayer since the Finn equivalent is the one carrying the whole thing independent of even the playable army. He’s even instrumental in getting Claude’s group in the palace in the first place by showing up after Chapter 19 to share the intel he’s gathered. I’m not going to think very hard about a heavily armored giant successfully pulling off stealthy reconnaissance in an enemy city, but that speaks even more to his single-minded dedication. But there’s no resolution to any of this, apart from (so I’ve seen online) a few lines from a monastery NPC next chapter explaining what became of Dedue afterwards. He - and Dimitri - deserved better.

Oh, some other stuff happened. I was firstly surprised to see that these two chapters are played back-to-back with no month between them, just like in the Lions route. It seems that not all the Part 2′s share the same structure with regard to the calendar.

After Edelgard’s emotionally anticlimactic death the story abruptly shifts as a posthumous letter from Hubert gets everyone to remember Those Who Slither and their blood experiments and nukes. Unlike the Lions route, we also get to see Rhea after her years in captivity, and she provides some useful setup on the true story of Nemesis that will undoubtedly come in handy when the army has to kill him in two chapters. She pointedly does not mention that the really big reveal is dragons, but I’m expecting that either to come later or to only be fully unveiled on the church route.

Claude’s rosy vision of all the setting’s peoples cohabitating peacefully is cute even if it’s utterly unrealistic. It also helps distinguish him from Quan, who has similarly grandiose ambitions that include trampling over the sovereignty of other nations but who lacks any good ethical foundation for those ambitions apart from the unshakable belief that his bloodline is just so awesome that they deserve to rule Thracia.

And just in case she needed to look even worse in hindsight, Edelgard’s refusal to ally with Claude because he’s unfamiliar with the history of Fódlan - only revealed in their boss conversation - comes off as even more misguided now when Claude is bluntly grilling Rhea for the truth and resolving to take out Those Who Slither. I can appreciate that she’s xenophobic (and megalomaniacal) herself, sure, but it’s almost as weak a justification as that drivel in the Lions route about the desires of the common people.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Spoilers

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caveartfair · 6 years ago

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The Art of China’s Empresses Reveals Their Powerful, Secret Lives

Probably Giuseppe Castiglione and other court painters, Empress Dowager Chongqing at the Age of Seventy, ca. 1761. © The Palace Museum.

Probably Giuseppe Castiglione and other court painters, Empress Xiaozhuang, ca. 1750. © The Palace Museum.

At the onset of Empresses in the Palace, the 2011 miniseries that caused a sensation in China, a beautiful young woman, Zhen Huan, is paraded before the emperor. She is one of many marriage-age girls who have been summoned to Beijing’s Forbidden City to be considered for the Yongzheng Emperor’s harem. Although it is an honor to be chosen as an imperial consort, Zhen is dismayed—she must leave her family behind and enter into a new life of luxury, restriction, and scheming ambition.

In the historical epic, set against the backdrop of the flourishing Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) in the 18th century, Zhen navigates the treacherous, strictly regulated court, where eight ranks of consorts compete with the top empress and vye for the emperor’s attention. (While there was only one empress at a time, the larger lower ranks could move up the social ladder, especially by bearing sons.) At the top of this food chain stood the empress dowager—a consort who had either installed her son on the throne, or was the widowed primary wife of a previous emperor.

The real women who lived in the palace are shrouded in mystery, but Daisy Yiyou Wang and Jan Stuart—the curators of a new exhibition that delves into the empresses’ lives—emphasize that the TV show is a dramatization. At least, there’s not enough evidence to prove that the salacious backstabbing and love affairs that dominate the plot actually took place.

“Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, 1644–1912,” a collaboration between the Palace Museum in Beijing; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts; and the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C. (where it is now on view), capitalizes on the popularity of such costume dramas. The exhibition centers on five empresses’ little-acknowledged influence on art, religion, and politics through the furniture and objects they used, the paintings they enjoyed, and the jewelry and clothes they wore.

Court hat with phoenixes. Probably Imperial Workshop, Beijing, 18th or 19th century. © The Palace Museum.

Festive robe with bats, lotuses, and the characters for longevity, Jiaqing period, 1796–1820. Probably Imperial Silk Manufactory, Suzhou (embroidery), and Imperial Workshop (tailoring). © the Palace Museum.

Pair of bracelets with bats, peaches, and flowers, probably 19th or early 20th century. © The Palace Museum.

Seal of empress with double-headed dragon with box, tray, lock, key, and plaques, 1922. © The Palace Museum.

Hairpin with figure and vase, 18th or 19th century. © The Palace Museum.

The relative obscurity of these women runs counter to our understanding of royalty today. “If you watch the royal wedding in England, it’s a public affair, a spectacle,” Wang said. “Back then, imperial women were probably completely invisible to the general public.” In European monarchies, copies of rulers’ portraits were circulated around the world for others to venerate; in China, access to imperial powers was a privilege, their images considered sacred.

The curators also knew they were up against pernicious gender bias in their field. Scholars of Chinese art history generally believed that women at court had access to inferior art, fashion, and decorations compared to those used by the emperor. “People questioned us from the beginning because we didn’t think objects used by women and made for women were secondary art objects,” Wang said. She was convinced that some of the most spectacular pieces in the Palace Museum collection were enjoyed by powerful women. She was right.

Court painters, Drinking Tea from Yinzhen’s Twelve Ladies, 1709–23. © The Palace Museum.

Probably Giuseppe Castiglione and other court painters, Consort of the Qianlong emperor and the future Jiaqing emperor in his boyhood, probably 1760s. © The Palace Museum.

The curators found that the quality of art and objects owned by these high-ranking ladies matched those of the emperor, though they didn’t always feature the same motifs. “There’s a longstanding thought in Chinese culture that if you have good omens, images of what is desired surrounding a person, that can help actualize the goal,” Stuart said. Thus, women in the court found themselves surrounded by images of mothers and sons, or symbols suggesting fertility—a woman holding a seeded gourd, or two interlocking jade circles, a reference to continuity.

Their quarters were decorated with exquisite pieces of furniture. One delicate lacquer cabinet in the exhibition—whose staggered shelves offer discreet places to put personal treasures—is painted with a delicate landscape scene and auspicious motifs like the bat. Each piece in an empress’s living space was similarly spectacular and refined.

Festive robe with bats, clouds, and the characters for longevity, Qianlong period, 1785 or earlier. Probably Imperial Silk Manufactory, Nanjing (weaving), and Imperial Workshop (tailoring). © the Palace Museum.

Still, the lives and activities of these women have been obscured for centuries. The Qing court, like many other monarchies around the world, had a patrilineal structure. There was a tradition to record the emperor’s life in great detail, but no such tradition for his wives. “To say they’re not documented at all,” however, “would be a false statement,” Wang said.

Often, the influence of the empresses is only obliquely referenced in archival documents written by the emperor, and so they are characterized from their husband’s or son’s point of view. “Although it’s not strictly articulated, you can get a very strong hint that many of these women were educated, they could talk about state affairs, and be the soulmate of their husband,” Wang said. The empress was also expected, like women all over China, to be a good household manager.

Qing Kuan and other court painters, The Grand Imperial Wedding of the Guangxu Emperor (detail), ca. 1889. © The Palace Museum.

To navigate the intense competition at court, savvy networking with both men and women became paramount for success—and survival. The women who rose to power in the imperial court were those who understood the rigid social codes and worked to exploit their possibilities. Their influence on state affairs “was more about subtle subversion than overt,” Wang said, and often went undocumented.

Shrewd dowager empresses took advantage of traditions of filial piety, which demanded that the emperor bow to no one—except for his mother. “That quirky fact is a nice way to be reminded that in the Manchu culture, women actually had dignity, authority, and status,” Stuart said. Empress dowager Chongqing was visited by her son, the Qianlong Emperor, almost every day, Stuart observed, and though her advice—on battle strategy, or how to pray—was not always recorded, we know from historical records that he did, in fact, follow her suggestions.

Ritual space in the Main Hall of the Palace of Longevity and Health. Courtesy of the Palace Museum, Beijing. © The Palace Museum.

Empresses could additionally wield influence as religious patrons. Empress Xiaozhuang, who was Mongolian, was the first person to bring a dedicated worship of Tibetan-style Buddhism to the Qing court, which became the main religion practiced there. As part of her patronage, she commissioned a tremendous amount of high-quality art for the temple near her residence. A portrait of Xiaozhuang from around 1750 appropriately shows the empress in a monkish brown gown, clutching prayer beads.

The Qing dynasty’s last empress, Cixi, achieved an unprecedented level of overt influence, “controll[ing] the power of the court for more than 40 years,” Wang said. Cixi played up her position as the senior matriarch to manipulate the men in her life, especially her husband, son, nephew, and grandnephew, all of whom became emperor at one point. When her son ascended the throne as a little boy, Cixi ruled as co-regent with another woman and the emperor’s brother. “She must have had incredible people skills,” Wang said.

Empress Dowager Cixi with foreign envoys’ wives in the Hall of Happiness and Longevity (Leshou tang) in the Garden of Nurturing Harmony (Yihe yuan), ca. 1903–05. Photo by Yu Xunling. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Cixi’s subversion of gender roles isn’t found in texts, but in art. In the Chinese tradition, the most important person is depicted as the largest figure in a painting. In one work showing Cixi playing chess with her son, she is tellingly shown as bigger than the emperor.

Cixi deeply understood the power of images. At the dawn of the 20th century, invasive foreign powers seeking an “open-door” policy in China threatened the Qing empire. Cixi cannily began to cultivate relationships with foreign diplomats, especially their wives. She sent weekly gifts to Sarah Pike Conger, the wife of an American ambassador. Conger convinced Cixi to let an American painter, Katharine A. Carl, create her portrait. “For Westerners to see the real her rather than a dragon lady—that’s the kind of press she got at the time—was quite a coup,” Wang explained. She caused a revolution in Chinese court portraiture when she had an official portrait of herself exhibited at the World’s Fair.

For the first time, the public was invited to not only know of the empress’s great power, but to gaze upon her powerful visage. It was a transgressive moment of significant cultural sway, a “coming out” for the hidden female leaders of China’s Forbidden Palace. The curators likewise hope that the exhibition will inspire other scholars of history, Wang said, to pay attention to women’s lives. “There’s a lot to be uncovered.”

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT EQUITY

Languages Matter So suppose Lisp does represent a kind of servant, whom the employer has a duty to protect. If you're a wizard at fundraising, but I have to choose? They would seem to her not merely frightening, but disgusting.1 Great cities attract ambitious people. But I think the big obstacle preventing us from seeing the future of web startups. Thought experiment: If doctors did the same thing, you're probably not doing anything new, and dignity is merely a complicated but pointless collection of stuff to be memorized. Other times nothing seems interesting. When you get a new crop of 18 year olds who think they know how to run the companies they fund. The owner wanted the student to pay for what they made like air shipped through tubes on a moon base. In Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. What programmers in a hundred years. There was no protection against breakage except the fear of having to seem smooth and confident and respected by the VCs more like a fluid than individual objects.2

You see this less with Windows, because hackers would already be doing it.3 It's not that you don't learn anything from philosophy papers; I didn't use expert systems myself.4 Investors will try to seem more corporate, corporations will try to prevent others from having time to decide by giving you an exploding offer, meaning one that's only valid for a few key phrases and the names of different rounds.5 Every one responded that they'd prefer the guy who'd tried to start a startup with a couple; they meet a few at conferences; a couple VCs call them after reading about them. It's an unusual thing to do is talk in this artificial way, and eventually people will start to get sued much by established competitors. But people are not those who have it are not readily hireable. But vice versa as well.6 Prestige is the opinion of other investors to make them take off. He had equity.7 But the Collison brothers weren't going to wait. He meant the Mac and its documentation and even packaging—such is the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the early days, and I realized that though all of them work on anything they don't want to destroy it by feeding the cat, going out to buy something they need for their apartment, meeting a friend for coffee, checking email.

A startup with a friend. It's hard to tell what's expensive. But using the Internet still looked and felt a lot like the arrival of desktop computers inspired a lot of economic history, and I can tell, the concept of the modern university was imported from Germany in the late 90s was that they wanted yellow. Most people should still be climbing with data sets that small.8 If you can't already do it, you should ask what else they've signed.9 But the same alarms don't go off on the days when startups were more expensive. Different terms for different investors is clearly the way of Irish and Luxembourgish: they'll be saying but what about the professors who taught math could be required to write scholarly articles about history, but what growth rate successful startups tend to be short.10 But Clark did, and it would be more interested in an essay. So if you discard taste, you can tell investor A that this is the route to success is to be mistaken. Sheep act the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes.11 But until the 1980s being underpaid early in your career was part of, Hostex itself would be recognized as a spam term.12

But in a competitive market, even a differential of two or three of you, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's consuming all the CPU. And companies offering Web-based software. One founder was surprised by how much better you can do while you're still in school is not real work; grownup work is not a pyramid, but tapers at the bottom. They can teach students about startups, but philosophically they're at the mercy of circumstances in the past, when more things were physical. VCs feel about it. Great hackers tend to be unhappy in middle school and high school. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us. Getting money is almost a negligible factor. Notice we started out talking about things, and new ideas are increasingly valuable. The page was of course an ad for a porn site.

Angels are better at seeing the future than the best investors as partners. One implication of this theory is that parties shouldn't be too quick to reject candidates with skeletons in their closets.13 Consciously or not, we started out doing ___. We funded Viaweb entirely with angel money.14 If your program would be three times as long to write—and the rest of the race slowing down. For boys, at least now, the big companies in the first half of the stock market. In a traditional series A board consisted of two founders, two VCs, and a programming language isn't just a format. You should therefore never approach such investors first. But that's not all talks are good for. One of the things you sell.15

Most companies in a position to grow rapidly and will cost more to acquire later, or not, investors do it if you can. The difficulty of firing people is a particular problem for startups because they don't want to print vague stuff like fairly big. And when you look at how taboos are created. I sometimes suggest they try to get customers to pay them for something, technology will make it big. The point is, you have to like debugging to like programming, but they don't get blamed for it.16 Html. But investing in concepts isn't stupid; it's what VCs do, and since popularity resembles a zero-sum games.

This is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate everything else in the message.17 The philosophers whose works they cover would be rolling in their graves at that. Tell them that valuation is not the only way to find users to recruit manually—is probably a losing bet for a group of three programmers whose startup had been acquired by a big company, this may not be as big as Ebay. If you were going to do and where the leading center for it is, it is scanned into tokens, and everything they own will fit in one car—or more precisely, while she likes getting attention in the sense that I always want to know what the status quo is to take yourself out of the default grind and go live somewhere where opportunities are fewer in the conventional sense, but life feels more authentic.18 In that respect it's a black hole. One reason, obviously, is to work for a company they have qualms about. My usual trick is to ignore what your body is telling you.19 We did get a few of the most important quality is in a startup, as in most competitive sports, the task at hand almost does this for you: the probability is.20 Trying To understand what rejection means, you have to do licensing deals, or hiring, or organization. 83,000 people worked there.

Notes

I'm not saying that the missing 11% were probably also intelligence.

The reason we quote statistics about the Airbnbs during YC. I did manage to think of ourselves as investors, but the nature of an official authority makes all the worse if you're not allowed to ask permission to go to work like casual conversation. But the most important section.

IBM 704 CPU was about bands. If a company has to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of customers times how much of the best ways to get you a question you don't know of no one is harder, the LPs who invest in so many different schools of thought about how things are going well, but for the first digital computer game, you can describe each strategy in terms of the per capita as in Boston, or at such a dangerous mistake to do good work and thereby earn the respect of their hands thus tended to be considered an angel investment from a VC means they'll look bad if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference. According to Zagat's there are few who can say they're not.

01.

But that is exactly my point. A professor at a public company not to grow as big.

What they forget is that they probably wouldn't even cover the extra cost. But it's unlikely anyone will ever hear her speak candidly about the qualities of these people make the people they want to keep them from leaving to start startups, so it may seem to have to do better.

If you want to start some vaguely benevolent business. For example, the less educated ones usually reply with some axe the audience at an ever increasing rate. The other reason it might help to be sharply differentiated. Or worse still, has one booked for them.

People tell the craziest lies about me.

They're still deciding, which merchants used to build little Web appliances. They live in a way to answer, and one VC. At the time 1992 the entire period since the mid twentieth century, art as stuff. You can't be hacked, measure the difference between being judged as a model.

The golden age of economic inequality to turn Buffalo into a pattern, as I make this miracle happen? Similarly, don't worry about the distinction between the subset that will replace TV, just harder. In the original source of food. I mean efforts to manipulate them.

I see a lot heavier. Only founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, but you're very docile compared to what you launch with, you should prevent your beliefs about its intrinsic qualities. Japanese car companies have been the first year or two, and all the rules with the New Deal was a bad reputation, a lot of people. If language A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that's the main reason kids lie to adults.

This would add a further level of links. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day pitch, the technology business. Even now it's hard to answer the first meeting. Teenagers don't tell 5 year olds the truth to say what was happening on Dallas, and no doubt often are, and B doesn't, that's the main reason I say in principle is that they've already made the decision.

In that case the money they're paid isn't a picture of anything. Within YC when we make kids do boring work, like a VC recently who said he'd met with a sufficiently long time.

There is always raising money.

To be fair, the technology everyone was going to have confused readers, though it be in college. They don't make wealth a zero-sum game. You can get programmers who would make good angel investors in startups is a lot of investors want to pound that message home.

If you can work out. Even though we made comparatively little from it.

Proceedings of AAAI-98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization. I'm not saying public school kids at least 150 million in 1970. If he's bad at it. Throw in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, would be to ask permission to go to die.

Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. The biggest counterexample here is defined from the truth to say now. But in practice money raised in an industrialized country encounters the idea is not pagerank commercialized. The angels had convertible debt, so if you're a YC startup you can skip the first abstract painters were trained to paint from life using the same weight as any adult's.

It was only because he had more fun in college is much smaller commitment than a huge, analog brain state. Gary, talks about programmers, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of State and the restrictions on what interests you most. You have to do it. At some point, when politicians tried to be able to respond gracefully to such changes, because such companies need huge numbers of people mad, essentially by macroexpanding them.

We Getting a Divorce? As a friend who started a company they'd pay a lot to learn. Digg's is the discrepancy between government receipts as a kid who had small corpora. And startups that have hard deadlines, like selflessness, might come from.

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aswasifalimediastudies · 6 years ago

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Research Basics

If we breakdown a film to the most basic form possible, its pretty much-moving pictures. Frames of pictures being captured at a very high rate. With this concept in mind, there are certain rules for films in general; being the rules of composition. Every shot should be framed & composed very carefully and with precision. It all depends on where you want the audience’s attention to be or sometimes it's done to look fascinating, while still giving important information.

These Rules of Composition are talked about briefly in the following video.

youtube

Framing is very crucial, so are these rules of composition. Proper framing usually makes the shot look more pleasing & attracts the audience’s attention towards a particular subject.

Similarly, the rules of composition can also be broken in order to confuse the audiences or make them feel uncomfortable. This is usually done in the show Mr. Robot

#1- 180 Degree Rule

It’s a very important rule to follow, especially if you’re filming characters talking to one another.

For example, while filming characters speaking to each other, while being parallel to each other, then you would film them in this manner.

This tells the audience that the characters are sitting parallel to one another during a shot-reverse-shot.

Another thing to note is when filming a sequence of someone leaving a place & walking away from it to the right side, you must then maintain flow when cutting to another shot by making the character move towards the right otherwise if the character moves in the left direction, it will seem like they’re going back

The shot that will follow this scene should have the character walking towards the right.

not the left

Film Riot’s video does an excellent job of explaining these principles more easily.

youtube

#2- Rule of thirds

Imagine that your image is divided into 9 equal segments by 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines. The rule of thirds says that you should position the key elements in your scene along these lines, or at the points where they meet.

Doing so will add balance and interest to your photo; it will also drive the audience’s attention towards the subject as seen below.

#3- Framing

The world is full of objects which makes perfect natural frames, such as trees, building, alleyways, signs, etc. By placing these around the edge of the composition you help separate the main material from the outside world. The result is a more focused image which pulls your eye freely towards the main point of interest.

#4- Leading lines

These lines help guide the viewer through the image and concentrate attention on important details. Anything from paths, walls or patterns can be used as leading lines just like frames.

#5- Balancing Elements

Placing your main subject off-center, as with the rule of thirds, creates a more appealing photo, but it can leave a void in the scene which can make it feel meaningless. You can achieve a balanced production and even out the main subject’s “visual weight” by including another article of lesser importance to fill the space.

#6-Depth of field

Usually, filmmakers use focusing to blur the background of the subject. This is done with very fast lenses with apertures such as f2.8, f2, f1.8, f1.4, f1.2, & f1.1. F stops are how wide a camera lens opens to allow light in. The faster the f stop the more light it allows in, however, shallower depth of fields can be achieved with slower lenses but only not as smooth. The primary purpose for this is to keep the focus on the subject without puzzling the viewers or if there is no background balance.

Shallow Depth of field

The diagram tells you how a narrow Depth of field & Shallow Depth of field compare.

Focus Pulls are another method which is used to direct focus from one object to another.

These just hardly scrape the surface, there is always room for experimentation & even in a lot of cases, breaking these rules.

Lighting

Lighting is very critical in cinematography, it helps encourage focus upon specific subjects. Lighting a subject is more than just illuminating a torch on your actor, it takes much more than that but since our production is minimum, I’ll be sticking to mainly the basics.

Key light - Used to light up the common space/ area often its the brightest area of the subject or the most exposed.

Fill light- It's used to fill in the dark/underexposed areas such as the shadows on the face.

Backlight- Or the separation light to separate the subject from the background to make the object look three dimensional Often, the backlight shoots down from a higher angle.

Shots, angles, movements & compositions.

shots

Establishing Shot: The establishing shot is used to give the viewers information of the setting like its name suggests, it establishes the setting, the time of day, the time period, the weather, etc. Typically films open with these shots to give its viewers of where we are present, for instance, a shot of a jungle to tell people where the shot is taking place.

master shot

A shot that can double as an establishing shot though its main objective to showcase the complete scene & usually includes the characters. It gives more meaning to the establishing shot & follows up in order to give the viewers a more personal understanding of where they are such, like a room with our film’s main character.

Close-up

A close up fills the screen with part of the subject, such as a person’s head/face. Framed this tightly, the emotions and reaction of a character dominate the scene.

Extreme Close Up

It highlights a small area or detail of the subject, such as the eye(s) or mouth

Medium Shot

A medium shot frames a subject from about waist & up. Its main objective is it presents a subject in more detail.

Medium Long Shot

A shot that shows subject from the knees up.

Medium Close Up

A shot that frames the subject from chest or shoulder up.

Wide shot

A shot that shows the entire object or human figure and it’s surroundings.

Two-shot

A shot with two subjects.

Aerial shot

A shot that is taken from a helicopter or drone.

Point-of-view shot or pov shot

A shot that is taken from a person’s point of view or perspective or first person.

Over-the-shoulder shot,

A shot was taken from the back of a person’s shoulder.

Angles

high angle

A shot that is taken from an elevation looking downwards at a subject normally to show power.

low angle,

A shot that is taken from a lower angle looking up

canted angle

Also known as the Dutch angle, which has the camera slightly tilted. Funnily enough, it was first done by the Germans.

Movements

Panning

Moving the camera in a horizontal position.

Tilting

Tilting the camera by a few degrees

youtube

Tracking

Tracking a Subject

steadicam

A device used to make handheld shots more steady

youtube

Dolly

A tripod with wheels

crane

A camera elevated in the air with the help of a crane

hand-held,

A camera shot while in hand, the footage is very shaky.

youtube

Zoom

Slowly getting closer to a subject.

Sounds

Sounds are very crucial in films. Remember, audiences can overlook poor picture quality in the film except never sound. Its the essence of film & is what usually makes films soo modernized. Production houses spend millions of dollars on sounds in order to engage the audiences, give them information & make fictional things sound convincing.

Types of sounds

Diagetic

Sounds that come from the object inside the frame.

Non- Diagetic

Sounds that originates from outside the frame Dialogues These are words spoken by an actor on screen to convey information Sound Effects (SFX) Sound Effects or SFX are sounds that are usually produced with the help of folly artists to give objects a sound so they are convincing. Such as the sound of a gunshot. These sounds are added in post. Ambiance Sounds or Ambient sounds

These sounds are sounds that are recorded in order to provide a scene with more context, it could be the sound of cars in a city in the background or sounds of people speaking in an office setting.

Folly

The art of folly is to use random objects to create sounds that may resemble the behavior on screen. For example, the sound of sausages frying might be used as sounds of rain.

Music, Score, Soundtrack

Music is the essence of a film, without music you can’t impact the audience heavily, it adds flavor to the moment. It emphasizes things, it can be used to make things epic, intense, emotional or even uncomfortable. The film is more than just visual, music can really change how people interpret your film. A film’s score adds to the emotion the film is trying to convey, it thematically matches itself with what’s going on & it makes for an engaging experience. It plays with the audience’s mind. For example, the shower scene from psycho would not be as impactful & creepy without the music as it is with the music.

https://youtu.be/oRmPktmEKKM

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melissahappyplace · 6 years ago

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HAPPY PLACE: Melissa Benefiel

You do not get many chances in life to start again… a fresh beginning! In March of last year, we sold our home in less than 24 hours and soon our new adventure in Granger, Indian began. We packed up our lives and our stuff and moved one- hour west. We have a new home, a few new friends, a new school, new neighbors, new favorite stores and restaurants, and while this is incredibly exciting and positive… its also very overwhelming. The need for a space of my own, my Happy Place, has never been more important.

When we moved into our current home, several rooms needed immediate attention including our upstairs bathroom that had bright blue and purple paint with a surfboard border … like we live near water when we indeed do not. Eventually I painted my daughter’s bedroom, a powder room on the main floor and spent months trying to find a way to update our flooring and kitchen without spending more than we’ll ever see again when we sell our home. I now understand the reason why so many homes never get updated and the appeal of a turn key home has never been more appreciated. Fortunately, our flooring/kitchen remodel is now almost complete.

This whole moving in and updating process has kept me distracted from the stress of everything outside our home being new and foreign. A lifelong homebody, I take even more comfort in my new home where I feel safe from the new world around me. As I venture out more and more into the unknown, my return home has taken on greater importance and makes me feel even more comforted. There are many rooms in this home that I enjoy and appreciate, but one room started bringing me more joy than the others early on and has become my Happy Place.

As time went by this summer, I found myself gravitating to the safety and coziness of my home office. I’ve never had an office that wasn’t a bedroom turned office space. This luxury has become the place I turn to when I want to write, read, reflect and get in a good head space. I turn on one soft desk light and begin turning my dreams into plans, into a strategy.

My home office is where this blog, Happy Place, became more than a dream. Its where I get in communion with God as he guides my creative process. I cannot describe writing as anything less than holy. I’m not a religious person, but I do believe we are never closer to God than when we are using our gifts to create, to make the world a little better, a little more beautiful. A new friend recently shared that she enjoys my blog because it’s such a positive escape from the division and negativity we currently face in the U.S. That’s what the Happy Place blog is for me, but I didn’t appreciate that it could serve my readers in a similar manner.

I was born and raised in Indiana. I met my husband while getting my master’s degree at Purdue. I met Jeff at a party I didn’t want to attend. He was a lowly undergraduate and I was way too sophisticated to go to an undergraduate party. Fortunately, I ended up having nothing going on that Saturday evening and this party was my only option besides PJs and a movie. I know its cliché to say this, but bare with me…. I knew the moment I saw him. At Last, My Love Had Come Along as Etta James sang…. Less than 3 years later we were married and 3 years after that we had our daughter.

Who am I besides who I share my life with … that’s an important question for any woman. I AM the mom of a 40-year-old in a 14-year-old body and I AM the wife of a quiet, introverted man who works harder than anyone I know. But beyond that? I am a 42-year-old woman who enjoys writing, reading, and working every day to get closer and closer to living my best life.

I am at that age where you realize half of your life has come and gone in a flash. I am no longer under the delusion that this is some sort of dress rehearsal. I realize that living with intention has never been more important because if I really want my dreams to come true… the clock is TICKING! This is a curse and a blessing. When I’m not in a good head space, it fells like panic to the end of the race we call life. When I am in a good head space, it feels like the awareness I need to get super motivated and turn my dreams into a strategy.

When I’m in my office, I feel like anything is possible. Any dream can indeed become a reality. And whenever I begin negative self-talk, I am reminded of what’s possible by two quotes! Right in front of my laptop is a small canvas and written in a chalk like calligraphy is “Good Things Are Going to Happen.” On a similarly small magnet that I’ve placed on a rose gold cell phone holder appears my favorite quote that is saving my middle-aged life right now: “just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly . . .” That is a mic drop moment for me every time I read it! I am a weird combination of introvert/extrovert and pessimist/optimist. I am someone who must fight my natural inclination to climb into my crab shell and put myself out there anyway and I fight off my pessimist inclinations in order to stay in the belief that I am capable of and deserve BIG, good things. As I’ve said several times on my social media, I do not like words on the walls from a design perspective, but… I strongly believe we need reminders of the person we are and the life we are trying to live.

The lighting and quietness of my office makes me feel protected and safe. Good lighting is probably better for a work space, but I enjoy mood lighting in general and in my office especially. My L-shaped frosted glass desk is full of one of my favorite things in the whole world…. OFFICE SUPPLIES! When I tell you that I have a minor addiction to office supplies much like the addiction I once had to school supplies… I am not overstating this! Anyone who knows me well knows Melissa likes a good pen, pretty journals, fancy notecards, colorful post-its, etc., etc., etc. I don’t know how to explain to you the endorphin rush I get when I’m in the office supply section at Target or enter a Staples. Whatever makes you happy, right? Right???

To personalize this space further, I have pictures of our recent trip to California on one wall. If my Happy Place were a state, it would be California! Yosemite, Big Sur, San Francisco, Monterey, Oh My! So, my Happy Place had to include my favorite vacation spot. On another wall, I have a piece by a friend and artist who lives in Valparaiso, Indiana. Melissa Washburn’s image of an Elephant and a fork with the words, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time” reminds me that all good things take time. You rarely realize your dreams overnight. I need this reminder because patience has ALWAYS been a challenge for me.

On a small wall near the entrance to my office are pictures of the English alternative band, Gomez. Jeff and I have seen them perform at the Vic Theatre in Chicago literally every time they’ve been on tour since our daughter was a toddler. They’re ‘our band’ and having them in my Happy Place seems especially appropriate.

The book shelf! All my most loved books are housed in a tall IKEA bookshelf. I only keep books that I know I will read again. I have never had a hard time passing on a book that I didn’t love to a local library or other charitable organization. This means all that is left on my bookshelves are books that truly captured my heart and mind, books that I will read again and again in the years ahead. Reading is my escape! Reading is how I would spend most of my time if life allowed it. Anywhere my books are is naturally my Happy Place. And fortunately, I can bring them with me wherever I travel and create a temporary Happy Place in an airport, hotel, or anywhere else I bring my books.

Some people don’t care what the space around them looks like. They work just as productively in an ugly cubicle as they would an expansive corner office in a high-rise building. They live just as comfortably and fully in a dated apartment as they would a luxury flat. I will never advocate the necessity of luxury to enjoy one’s life, but I fully appreciate the value of living and working in a beautiful space. It often doesn’t cost a lot to make your office or other living spaces beautiful to you. And I can personally attest to how uplifting and inspiring a beautiful space can be.

Since we know life is short, why not agree that beauty does matter, and we indeed deserve a beautiful space in which to launch into each day ready to live our best lives? It’s a simple truth that can make a huge difference. Start small. Pick the colors, fabrics, art work, photographs and décor that will make your space comfortable and beautiful to you. Then, get to work at creating a space that will fill you up and inspire you to make your dreams a reality.

I join you in the endeavor to make the next chapter of your life the best. I began my new work as a full-time Grant Writer at the University of Notre Dame this week in their Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO). Their mission is finding solutions that move people out of poverty permanently. I continue to make exercise and healthy eating a priority for the first time in my life. To stop complaining and do something instead, I’ve joined the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. Each day, I take my homebody out into my new community to discover restaurants, stores, parks, and more. In all this newness that scares the introvert in me who often wants to climb into her crab shell, I find refuge in my Happy Place. In its quiet, dark, cozy recesses, I take refuge and find the peace and energy to return to the world ready to be bold and live . . . like there’s no tomorrow.

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maxslogic25 · 6 years ago

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How To Write The Best Google Ads Copy & Back It Up on Landing Pages

Crafting strong ad copy on Google Ads isn’t hard, but to do it right, we have to flex both art and science muscles. We’re only given a small number of characters on search engine results pages (SERPs), so we have to make them count.

When writing copy, it’s important to think about the experience your visitor is having from query, to ad copy, to landing page.

If there’s a hiccup along the way or they feel like they might be going down the wrong path, they’ll hit the back button. Worse, they might conduct another search and find another company ready to meet their needs. Additionally, as much as we would like it to, no ad can convert a prospect without a strong accompanying landing page.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to ad writing, but following some best practices will help make us more successful. With that in mind, below are eight tips for writing the best ad copy (backed up with landing pages) for Google Ads:

1. Leverage Keywords Where Possible

A staple best practice of ad copywriting is to include keywords in ad copy to mirror the searcher’s query. By parroting back phrases similar to what they searched for, we’re telling them that they’re in the right place.

Keywords in Ad Copy

In the real world, if you order something from a coffee shop, you expect them to call out exactly what you ordered when it’s ready. If you order an Americano and the barista yells out “Coffee!”, they’re technically correct. But it’s not immediately clear to you that it’s your coffee or someone else’s.

Adding keywords to ad copy is fairly simple, but it’s important to make sure the keywords are being used well. Don’t just stuff in as many as you can. An ad that’s saturated with keywords likely doesn’t convey any message and could be worse than an ad with no keywords. It’s more important to accurately articulate what you’re selling.

Keyword placement in ads can also play a large role. I highly recommend you test keyword placement within your ads to see what works best. Sometimes it’s best in Headline 1. Sometimes Headline 2. And sometimes it’s best used in a sentence in a description. You won’t know until you test!

That’s just the ad copy component. What about the landing page?

Keywords in Landing Pages

Using search keywords in the headlines and/or text at the top of a landing page tells the visitor, “You’re in the right place. We have what you’re looking for.” (“This is your caffè Americano,” if you will.)

Unfortunately, swapping text on landing pages isn’t quite as easy as doing it in ad copy. If your landing pages need to be hardcoded, then logic might suggest that you need to create a new page for each different keyword phrase you’re targeting.

In my opinion, though, unless you’re driving extremely high traffic through those pages, this isn’t necessary.

Instead, choose some common phrases, likely the most highly searched variants of your keywords, and turn them into headlines. Ideally, the number of pages you’ll need to create will go down depending on the number of keyword phrases you have in your account.

Let’s take an example: I’m advertising scheduling software for hourly employees.

A basic headline could be “Employee Scheduling Software,” a typical query in the account. Easy and to the point. But the page that uses this headline could easily be used for phrases that are close to, but not exactly, that phrase: scheduling employees, tools for employee scheduling, schedule hourly employees, etc.

Try to write headlines that can work for multiple phrases to limit the number of pages you need to make. And do this while also getting as close as possible to the initial search query.

PRO TIP: If you build your page with Unbounce, you can also use Dynamic Text Replacement (DTR) to help you match your landing page copy to your ads, saving you bundles of time that you can spend more effectively.

2. Be As Specific As the User’s Query

Every time a person conducts a search, their query holds a degree of specificity. It’s important that you match their specificity as much as possible.

If they’re not being specific, in other words, you can keep your ad copy relatively broad and cover the basics. If they are being more specific, you should try to match whatever their query is.

Let’s use the example of shoes. Here are some ways you could adjust your copy based on differing degrees of searches:

An example of how ad copy matches a search query.

The only piece adjusted is the first headline, but it creates a much tighter theme with the query and lets them know they’re in the right place.

The same principle holds through with the landing page and is potentially even more important than the copy itself. One of the keys to conversion rate optimization is giving your prospects what they need. Continuing the shoe example above, here are potential pages that you would want to direct people to:

“Shoes”: www.example.com

“Women’s shoes”: www.example.com/women

“Women’s Nike shoes”: www.example.com/women/nike

Obviously, this is a fake website, but the landing pages used match as close as they can to the query. Each time we add a word—from “shoes” to “women’s shoes” and from “women’s shoes” to “women’s nike shoes”—we learn more about their need and can match that with a more specific landing page.

Each time someone searches, they’re telling you what they want. Listen to them and deliver results with as much specificity as you can.

3. Always Include a Call To Action

When it all comes down to it, we’re running ads because we want the visitor to take a specific action. For some, that might be making a purchase. For others, it might mean filling out a lead form. No matter the action, it’s important to either use that phrasing in the ad copy or give them a clue as to what you want.

Using a call to action in ad copy helps frame the visitor experience. It can operate similarly to the Prequalifying ad copy mentioned in the next section. Once they understand what you want them to do, it can help weed out people who aren’t interested. This practice helps save you the cost of the click.

Once a visitor has had their expectations set with the ad copy, they should click through to a landing page that mirrors that same call to action. If you’ve asked them to “Buy Now” in your copy, they should be given the opportunity to buy on the landing page. If you’ve only asked them to “Learn More” in your copy, then be sure the landing page houses the information they need to decide whether to make a purchase down the road.

4. Test Psychological Approaches to Find the Right Fit

The messaging used in ad copy can be a critical selling point, but it need not be boring. If anything, SERPs are getting overcrowded with the same type of bland messaging for all ad slots. That’s an opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd.

It’s important to test the different psychological approaches to ad copy to know which performs best with your target audience. Here’s a quick rundown of the major types of ad copy approaches:

Features: highlighting the physical or intangible aspects of the product/service. (Memory foam)

Benefits: calling out the positive outcomes the visitor will have from the product/service. (More restful sleep)

Problem: focus on the actual issue at hand to relate to the problem the visitor is trying to solve. (Tired of Wasting Time?)

Solution: focus on the solution to the problem the visitor is facing. (Save Time)

Testimonials: using actual feedback/testimonials to leverage social proof. (“This product has changed my life.”)

Reviews: third-party reviews of the product/service, not from customers.

Top of the Class: calling out any awards, ratings, etc. to show you’re the best. (Best in category award, 2018)

Prequalifying: weeding out people who might not be a good fit for your service before they click. (“Luxury Tours,” attempting to weed out bargain travelers)

Once you’ve tested what works best, mirror that on the landing page to create a cohesive feel from start to finish. Choose images and calls to action that mirror those approaches where possible.

5. Don’t Sell a False Bill of Goods

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating, and so it’s own line item on this list:

Your landing page should back up what’s in your ad copy.

Ad copy and landing pages need to work together. No matter what copy is used, it’s important that the message and offer follow through to the landing page for a cohesive experience.

When this connection breaks down, it could look something like this:

A prospective customer conducts a search, clicks on an ad that says “20% off” only to get to the landing page a find out the offer is expired—or, worse, there’s no mention of it whatsoever. That’s frustrating!

As we discussed earlier, it’s important to get the visitor thinking about the call to action at the ad copy stage. If that call to action isn’t on the landing page, then those precious characters in the ad copy, as well as the price you paid for the click, were wasted. They are no longer primed to complete the conversion action you asked.

6. Use Ad Extensions Like Crazy

Ad extensions are pretty much exactly what they sound like: they’re additional areas of text that can extend the size of an ad. There are many different kinds of ad extensions at our disposal. Here’s the full list from Google Ads:

Take advantage of every extension that fits your business, but don’t forget the main reason for your ad.

Each has its use and purpose, and I’m not going to go into detail on each one. The ones that lend themselves to nearly every business are Sitelinks, Callout Extensions, and Structured Snippets.

Sitelinks

Sitelinks are simply additional text and links that can show up with ad copy. Ideally, you should leverage these to add supporting information to the primary ad copy in the ad group. These are essentially functioning as in-site navigation, but directly in the SERPs.

In the image above, the Sitelinks direct users to currently popular products and sections of Nike’s website.

Callout Extensions

Callout extensions are even easier than Sitelinks. These are simply a line of text, no longer than 25 characters.

Callout extensions are easy to implement.

This text can be used to put just about anything that helps support the ad. Similar to Sitelinks, however, it’s best if this text can be complementary and not repeat what’s in the original ad. These can be a quick list of features, benefits, or more information (like “Free Shipping”) if it didn’t fit in the ad text.

Structured Snippets

Lastly, Structured Snippets let you create a list within an ad extension. Simply pick the Header you want to start the list, then add in values below with 25 characters each.

Callout extensions are easy to implement.

There are a number of other ad extensions that can be added to any campaign. More often than not, it’s best to have as many ad extensions types in place as possible so any of them can be called up at any point.

However, there is one caveat to this. Don’t forget about the main reason for the ad. Sometimes one ad extension can be throttled and another type will be shown more often, potentially causing performance to drop. Keep this in mind when setting up ad extensions. Have as full of coverage as you can, but don’t sacrifice performance for ad real estate.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For more about how extensions can help your ads stand out from the competition, you’ll want to read Ryan Gould’s latest post on quick ways to breathe new life into your Google Ads.

7. Leverage Dynamic Ad Features

In addition to ad extensions, there are other features we can use to ensure that our ads are as impressive as possible. Below is a screenshot of the three dynamic ad features offered on the Google Ads platform. You can trigger this dropdown by typing in a { into the ad creation screen.

Typing a { brings up the dropdown for Keyword Insertion, Countdowns, and IF functions.

Keyword Insertion

Keyword Insertion (formerly Dynamic Keyword Insertion or DKI) is the most basic version of dynamic ads and is best used if your campaign structure isn’t strongly segmented. Keyword Insertion allows advertisers to substitute a search keyword in place of default text in your ad copy. However, the text with the keyword will not be used if the combination of the text plus DKI is too long. Take a look at the example below:

Using Keyword Insertion.

Here, I added “Women’s Shoes” as the placeholder text. If the keyword that triggers this ad is fewer than 13 characters long, then that keyword text will be added in place of “Women’s Shoes.”

For instance, if the keyword was “Tennis Shoes,” the headline will now read “Great Prices on Tennis Shoes.” But if the keyword is too long, like “women’s running shoes,” then the headline will read “Great Prices on Women’s Shoes” because the placeholder text will stay.

IF Functions

This dynamic ad feature lets advertisers create “if, then” statements within ad copy based on a user’s device or the audience they belong to.

Using powerful IF Functions is simpler than it seems.

IF Functions can be amazingly powerful if you have a different call to action for someone on a mobile device versus desktop (“Call Us” versus “Fill Out the Form”) or if you want to offer discounts to users within specific audiences, like existing customers.

IF Functions have some really powerful uses. You can read more in this post by Joe Martinez to get more ideas on how you can use them.

If you leverage IF Functions to create a different call to action or make a new offer depending on device or audience, it’s essential to make sure it’s carried over to the landing page. Be sure you’re not teasing a 20% discount in the ad copy, then not offering it once they get to the landing page (more on this below).

Countdowns

Lastly, Countdowns can be an amazing way to create urgency in ad copy without needing manual ad shifts for each day, hour, or minute until the offer expires. All we advertisers have to do is fill out the builder widget and Google will do the rest!

Countdowns add urgency to your copy.

With Countdowns, it’s imperative that the time in the ad copy and the time on site match up as closely as possible. Pay attention to time zones to be sure the offer isn’t ending too early or running too late in the ads. Each of these could cause performance changes or bad brand association depending on the error made.

8. #1 Rule: We’re Always Talking to People

Follow as many of the best practices above that you can, but don’t forget the reason we’re here: potential customers!

In every ad and on every landing page, we’re always talking to people. The final thing we should do before launching any new copy or landing page is to give it a gut check:

Is this something I would click on?

Does this sound appealing?

Does this ad make sense or is it just a bunch of keywords jammed together?

Does the landing page answer the promise set in the ad copy?

Conclusion

Writing ad copy for Google Ads is a combination of art and science. It requires that you look beyond the ad itself to the landing page. There are some technical best practices to follow that I’ve outlined here, but we also need to tap into our artistic side when speaking to other people. If ad copy were purely algorithmic, after all, everyone would be rich by now.

Give these best practices a shot and let us know your results! What tactic was the biggest help to you? What have you seen work best in your ad copy? Share with us in the comments!

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 https://unbounce.com/ppc/write-best-google-ads-copy/

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racheltgibsau · 6 years ago

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How To Write The Best Google Ads Copy & Back It Up on Landing Pages

When writing copy, it’s important to think about the experience your visitor is having from query, to ad copy, to landing page.

1. Leverage Keywords Where Possible

Keywords in Ad Copy

That’s just the ad copy component. What about the landing page?

Keywords in Landing Pages

In my opinion, though, unless you’re driving extremely high traffic through those pages, this isn’t necessary.

Let’s take an example: I’m advertising scheduling software for hourly employees.

Try to write headlines that can work for multiple phrases to limit the number of pages you need to make. And do this while also getting as close as possible to the initial search query.

2. Be As Specific As the User’s Query

Every time a person conducts a search, their query holds a degree of specificity. It’s important that you match their specificity as much as possible.

If they’re not being specific, in other words, you can keep your ad copy relatively broad and cover the basics. If they are being more specific, you should try to match whatever their query is.

Let’s use the example of shoes. Here are some ways you could adjust your copy based on differing degrees of searches: