Client Spotlight: West Tennessee State Fair

West Tennessee State Fair

The West Tennessee State Fair just concluded and we had the pleasure of helping them promote the Fair! We attacked promotions on a few fronts: video, photography, and social media.

Since we were not able to film at the last Fair, we recorded the first night of the Fair and released two videos on the following afternoon. Here they are:

 

We headed back on other nights to get additional photos and videos to use in the future. This will allow us to augment the videos from this year to use prior to the next Fair. Here are a few of those photos:

 

 

We also leveraged the things people love about the Fair as content for social media. We promoted each band that played and encouraged people to tell us what is their favorite Fair food. People love Fair food. We garnered 41 comments on this post.

State of the Camera Gear 2018

Camera Equipment

One of the bad things about being in the photography and video industry is that there is always something new to buy! So here is a glimpse into the equipment we use on a daily basis:

Photography:

Nikon D500

Favorite Lenses:
Nikon 50, 1.8
Tamaron 70-200 2.8
Tokina 14-20 F2

Lighting:
Vivitar On-Camera Flash
Godox Ad200 Flash
Apurture LightDome 36 inch softbox

Video
Sony A7SII (x2)

Favorite Lenses:
Sony E 50mm f/1.8 OSS Lens (x2)
Sigma 30mm f/2.8 DN

Lighting:
Apurture LightStorm
Dracast LED500 Silver Series Bi-Color LED Light

Sound:
Sennheiser MKE600 Shotgun Mic
Sennheiser ew 112-p G3 Camera-Mount Wireless Microphone System with ME 2 Lavalier Mic

Stabilizer:
Zhiyun-Tech Crane v2

Facebook’s Newsfeed Principles: Part 2

This is the second blog as we discuss Facebook News Feed Principles. If you missed the first one, start here.

This is a continued look at the Facebook News Feed Principles. These are drawn from the Facebook website and I am going to talk about them to help them make more sense for you!

Publisher Principle 2: People on Facebook Value Accurate, Authentic Content

In other words, people don’t want Fake News. But do they really?

I think this point might be more aspirational than reality. People really like whatever happens to align with their world view, it’s a phenomena called “Confirmation Bias.” “Confirmation Bias” is that our brain sees things in the world and makes special note of the things that line up with what we already thought. It notices and engages with things that confirm our biases.

Facebook seems to be focused on being sure people do not share content that is misleading or “click bait.” Click bait is a style of content that that has an intentionally misleading title in order to get people to click on the story. Once someone arrives at the page, the content is not related to the title that got them to click. The title is used as bait for the user.

But on a positive note, if we focus on making authentic content, I believe people will be more interested. Authentic content could include your real staff instead of models. Food actually served at your restaurant instead of stock photos. Make your brand the feature of these programs rather than stock photos.

If you are posting links or sending people to landing page, make sure people are seeing what they would expect. You know, treat others like you want to be treated, do not treat them like you are a marketer.

Facebook’s Newsfeed Principles: Part 1

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to look at the Facebook News Feed Principles. These are drawn from the Facebook website and I am going to talk about them to help them make more sense for you!

Principle 1: People on Facebook Value Content that’s meaningful and informative.

Facebook has to say it; but we should already know it. Facebook users (really all internet users) want content that is informative and meaningful. The reason they have to say this is people want to treat it like traditional advertising. Let’s just post our boring sale message on the Facebook page and expect people to interact. While that is easier, it’s not how the internet works.

Facebook can tell if people are interacting with your content. This is good and bad for folks. It is bad for people who do not work on creating good content for their pages. It is bad becuase if you do not put out good content, Facebook knows this and restricts your organic reach even further over time. It is good becuase if you are willing to invest in creating useful content, Facebook will help you distribute it better over time. It is also good because we know the rules of the game.

You can monitor your own success by reviewing your page’s insights. This will help you look to see how many people were interacting with your media on Facebook.

Within this principle, Facebook also suggests you try putting different types of content out. Using different types of content will help you engage different customers and re-engage old customers.

How can you create this content? Start by making a list of your customers’ reasons for coming to you or buying your product. Use this list to help generate ideas for content. Brainstorm a few different ways to help your customers over each of their pain points.

This is one of the reasons we write this blog! We want to help you get better and at the same time help you think, if I need help, these are the people to call.

Election Season 2018

We had the pleasure of working with four different campaigns this election season. Each campaign showcased a different personality and, as a result, each had different needs for their work. We are very selective of the groups we work with in this arena and I (Kevin) was glad to work with these four people not only as clients but also as friends.

  1. Jay Bush for State Representative.
    We did a lot of work for Jay Bush. We launched a website, created a campaign video, recorded testimonials with the community, took photos of families supporting Jay, and ran social media ads.
  2. Shannon Stewart for School Board:
    The “Shannon for Schools” branding needed to match the bright personality of the candidate. We went with an untraditional angle for the signage and branding. We also took some family photos to use during the campaign.
  3. Shawn Daly for School Board:
    Shawn is a fantastic candidate for school board. We created a traditional brand and landing page to help him introduce himself more to the community.
  4. AJ Massey for School Board:
    AJ’s branding colors are modeled after his favorite school, Ole Miss, and have an athletic flair (I mean the guy did play college football!). AJ ended up not having an opponent in the election so we didn’t have much additional work for him.

State of the Apps: May 2018

At Adelsberger Marketing, we use a lot of apps to help keep the business running smoothly. I know you probably use a few, too, but I wanted share ours in case you were looking for others to help productivity!

RainyMood: Rainy Mood is a free browser-based rain noise maker. I frequently use this in Chrome, with an extension called ‘Volume’ Master. I like to make the rain noises be the base layer of sound in my earphones when I am at theCO or working around other people. This allows a continuous background noise that I often edit video over or play focus music on top of it. It helps keep dips and track changes in the music from becoming distracting.

Google Drive: Adelsberger Marketing using Google’s G Suite for our emails, this also gives us access to Google Drive which we have nearly unlimited amounts of storage on. This is a way we share files internally and externally with clients. Instead of also paying for DropBox, we use Google Drive’s provided storage with G Suite. It’s pretty sweet.

BackBlaze: Fortunately, I have not needed to implement the recovery feature of BackBlaze yet, and hopefully I never will. Backblaze is a very affordable in-the-background backup service. It is always backing up my computer and it’s $5 a month for all you can use data. It also backs up external hard drives that you connect to your computer once a month. I have this running on all of my team’s computers.

Toggl: Toggle is our time tracking method of choice (right now). It helps us keep our time based on the client. We don’t charge hourly but it helps us review where we are spending our time.

Slack: We use slack internally to communicate as a team. We try to avoid sending email in house as much as possible. Slack is a lifesaver. Pro-tip: I recently found out that you can ask Slack to remind you of a message in a certain period of time. This is a new tool that I will use a lot.

Adobe Creative Cloud: We use the creative cloud suite for all of our creative work around here. Seems like on a weekly basis we use almost all of the major Adobe products!

Splice: Splice is the app I use to assemble my daily videos. It is a free app from GoPro and has built-in titles and sound files. It makes putting that video together a snap.

WordSwag: WordSwag may be some of the best money I have ever spent on an app. We use it all the time. Fortunately, they recently released some new fonts.

Overcast: Listening to podcasts is something I spend a lot of time on. Overcast helps me to do that better. It has smart speed, which removes dead spaces in conversation, which helps you listen to podcasts faster. It also allows you to save custom speeds for each of the shows that you listen to.

How Motion Improves Customer Experience

We have become accustomed to receiving mass amounts of information from various outlets throughout our day. To not get overwhelmed, we have also developed a subconscious system to filter out things that we know don’t interest us. Because of this, businesses have to figure out a way to connect with their customers in a non-intrusive way. One of these ways is the use of motion in your website, app, or social media post. In 2016, over 70% of all of the traffic online was video. That means that the greatest chance to reach a customer is to use a platform that they are primarily using. By using motion graphics in these videos, you will be able to hold their attention even longer.

This is because motion provides elements that a static graphic or photograph just can’t. For instance, take a look at this GIF that we made for one of our clients.

Now look a still from the gif.

 

 

With just stopping the motion, the personality of the graphic was taken away and made less interesting. We just naturally pay more attention to things that are moving especially when vibrant colors are involved.

Another benefit with using motion is that it can be used to focus a viewer’s eyes to a specific spot on their screen. With the majority of people consuming content on their mobile devices, apps and mobile sites benefit greatly from having motion elements. Take a look at this mockup of an iPhone screen.

 

Bright colors can draw your viewer’s attention. But look at how much more engaging the same notification is when it moves:

 

When providing content to your customers, you want them to be focused on what your business has to offer. One way to do that is by attracting them with a little bit of motion. This can be in the form of a video background on a website or a non-intrusive alert that provides helpful information. While this is a somewhat new idea in the world of marketing, it has its origins in the world of video production. Interviews usually have name plates that are on the lower area of the screen to provide the viewer with some important information that could have been easily overlooked. This also serves as place for things that weren’t said in the video to be placed.

The same concept can be used with a call to action button on a website or on an animated social media post. Just remember that it is better to be simple and subtle rather than having something that is visually overbearing.

Social Media Win: We Beefin?

Wendy’s is back at it again. They have taken their viral quality attacks on other burger chains to a new level of production with a mixtape. Yes, a mixtape. Released on Spotify.

You, too, can listen to the 5 tracks from Wendy’s taking shots at their competition. The best one from ‘fast food’s first lady’ is Rest in Grease. They very clearly take a shot at McDonalds, “why is your ice cream machine always broken?” This is a hilarious execution of a strategy that was already working on Twitter. The songs are not good enough to listen to just to listen to, but people checking them out once is worth the investment.

You can listen to them here:

State of the Podcasts: April 2018

I love listening to podcasts. I listen to them when I run, drive, and clean. Some people know this about me and I regularly get asked about suggested podcast listening. So I am going to put out an annual list to talk about what shows I am listening to and give you some suggestions on things to pick up:

(* Indicates a favorite)

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Social Media Marketing Podcast: Social Media Examiner
*Social Media Marketing Talk Show: Social Media Examiner
Perpetual Traffic: Digital Marketer
Smart Pizza Marketing Podcast: Bruce Irving

PRODUCTIVITY:

**Cortex: Relay FM
Free Agents: Relay FM

BUSINESS:

Corner Office Podcast: Market Place
*How I Built This with Guy Raz: NPR
The Businessology Show: Blumer
Open for Business: Gimlet
**StartUp: Gimlet (Start from Season 1 EP 1)
The Venture: Gimlet
The Pitch: Gimlet Media

EDUCATIONAL:
99% Invisible: Roman Mars
*Planet Money: NPR

FUN/OTHER:
Embedded: NPR
Empowered Parent Podcast (Formerly Empowered to Connect): One Big Happy Home
Ungeniused: Relay FM
**50 Things That Made the Modern Economy: BBC World Service (Start from Episode 1)
**Crimetown: Gimlet (Start from Episode 1)
*Hello Internet: CGP Grey Brady Haran
(During Draft Season Only) NFL: Move the Sticks: NFL Network
*Revisionist History: Malcolm Gladwell (Start from Episode 1)
Science VS: Gimlet
The Unmade Podcast: Brady Haran
*What Trump Can Teach Us About Con Law (Start from Episode 1)

FAITH:
*Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast: Gospel in Life

IN MY CUE (haven’t got through enough of the above yet to try these new ones):
Akimbo: Seth Godin
Building a Business that Lasts: Jay Owen
Business Wars: Wondery
GaryVee Audio Experience: Gary Vaynerchuk