Hello everybody, won’t you take a seat, cozy up, and join me for a moment as I recant my recent tales of searching for elusive knowledge at Ramblin Jackson? Excellent, let’s get started. Unfortunately, I fell ill this week during one of my scheduled days to come in, but the beauty of this digital world we live in made it possible to learn some things from the comfort of my bed! Take a gander at some of this newfound knowledge:
Electronic newsletters are a vital way to stay up to date with clients and customers. With Constant Contact, editing a newsletter can be a fairly simple task. However, it is important to remain consistent with the details of the newsletter, such as fonts, layout, colors etc.
Writing a script for an online video can be a fun and rewarding experience. Check out the latest Friday’s Informal Facebook Films and let me know what you think!
Social media plays a large role in retail purchasing decisions, a trend that is only going up
Print advertising can be extremely expensive. One square INCH of ad space in the Denver Post can cost as much as $314!
Thanks for a moment of your precious time. Now you can all go back to that really important thing you were doing, like playing Words With Friends.
Oh….Hi! And welcome to the 27th episode of Friday’s Informal Facbeook Report! We officially have as many episodes as there are moons around Uranus!
RJ News: Myspace Gains 1 Million New Users Last Month
Remember Myspace? You know the one where you were friends with Tom? Well it looks like it may be making a bit of comeback. A few years ago Myspace came under new ownership including Justin Timberlake owning a piece of the company and reinvented itself as a social media site strictly focused around music. It looks like this strategy may be paying off as they reported 1 million new members last month. That’s about 40,000 new members a day! That’s still a far cry from Facebook’s numbers, but it looks like Myspace may be the place to go for free streaming music.
What do you think about Myspace’s recent success? Let us know in the comments.
Really Remarkable Report – The Hunt for Bigfoot!
Bigfoot is out there! No, really. And no, I’m not talking about the old monster truck.
It all started, of course, with the old blurry Patterson film taken back in the late 60’s in norther California. Ever since, people have been convinced “Sasquatch” exists and some people have even gone looking. Such is a team of Animal Planet investigators who have been searching for over a year. Their show “Finding Bigfoot” is now heading into its 2nd season and they’re bringing out the big guns – night vision technology! Perhaps the use of technology and a TV production budget is what it will finally take to prove whether or not Bigfoot really exists.
All of this begs the question – like the supposed Wooly Mammoth sighting last week – why are all of these photographs and films always BLURRY? I mean, if we blur me, am I now some sort of weird extraterrestrial being? Chris…?
Pro tip – put your friggin’ phone number in your email signature!
One of the best ways to appear more professional, besides wearing a tie and carrying a black leather suitcase everywhere you go, is to have a personalized, stylized E-mail signature. An e-mail signature should ideally have your name, your company name, phone number, address and more depending on what you want. One of the best tools for designing your signature is with Wisestamp. Wisestamp is an app that you can add to most E-mail servers that allows you to customize your E-mail signature. One of the best features of Wisestamp is you can add icons to the bottom of your signature that take people to your Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social media sites.
Well that’s all the time we have for today, hope you enjoy the snow and as always don’t hesitate to let us know what you think in the comments or on Facebook! See ya next week!
It’s that time again! The time where I invite all of you into the world of a Ramblin Jackson intern to get a glimpse of what I do and learn. This week was somewhat special because on Wednesday the good people at Ramblin Jackson helped put on a workshop in Denver about Facebook and E-mail marketing. At this workshop I discovered that salad, while a light and nutritious meal, can be surprisingly heavy once piled into multiple large bowls. And that’s not the only thing I learned! Here are some more nifty tips that I gathered throughout the week:
· Hootsuite is a neat little tool that can be accessed from a smart phone or browser. From Hootsuite, one can easily manage their Twitter account by sending tweets, following your Twitter feed, follow specific has tags, follow your mentions, and look in your Twitter inbox all from one easy-to-navigate screen.
· A pre-production meeting is necessary with a client in order to narrow down exactly what the clients want in a video campaign, plus what would make for the best creative content.
· When doing a live Twitter feed, it is important to always end your tweet with the same hashtag in order to be easy to follow. At the Facebook + Email Marketing workshop last Wednesday, I tweeted with #smworkshop
As you may or may not be able to tell by now, people here are pretty busy. So busy in fact that the coffee flows like water. I’m yet to fall victim to the dreaded bean, but not for lack of trying on everybody else’s parts. It may almost be time for a coffee intervention…come back next week to see if it happens!
Oh, hi…Happy Friday and Happy February! Welcome to the 26th Episode of FIFF!
This Wednesday we hosted a Facebook and Email Marketing workshop with Constant Contact at the University of Denver. It was our first time presenting to a sold out audience, and boy, was it fun. It was so fun, in fact, that we have two more workshops coming in March. Check that out at ramblinjackson.com/events.
This week’s Pro Tip is for those of you who are lacking inspiration for your Social Media content. If you haven’t already, check out what your competitors are doing on Social Media, and steal ideas from them. This may sound creepy or dishonest, but really, it’s just part of market research.
But if you really want to get creepy — you could run Facebook advertisements that target the Fans of your competitors… think about that.
Well, that’s all the time we have for this week, we hope you’re enjoying the big snowstorm! As always, please let us know what you think in the comments and we’ll see you next week!
Another week working at Ramblin Jackson has passed by, which means another week of accumulating precious knowledge has taken place. Amongst the things I learned last week, picking the correct super bowl winner was not one of them. But this blog isn’t about the things I don’t know…because it would be far too long if it were. So, without further ado, I present the second edition of Nate’s Nifty Newfound Knowledge and what I’ve recently learned:
· When creating that all-important Facebook advertisement hovering on the right-hand side of all Facebook pages, you are limited to a title of 25 characters, one image, and body content of just 135 characters. Why 135? I don’t know. I once heard it’s because Mark Zuckerberg wrote a science fiction novel called “The Lonely Robot” that contained exactly 135 characters. This is most likely an old wives tale, but I like to believe it.
· A video permit is required when shooting a promotional video at most privately owned locations, such as the Coors Brewery. The process behind obtaining said permit could be difficult.
· Constant Contact is an excellent tool for creating and managing an e-mail marketing campaign. From Constant Contact, one can completely customize an e-mail advertisement, specify whom it goes to, and follow its progress.
· How to create a new page (the page you’re currently on!), upload a photo, and edit posts in a pre-existing WordPress
Check back next week to see what else I learn. You know, they say knowledge is power. At the rate I’m going, by the end of my internship I could be so powerful that I become the focus of Michael Bay’s next action flick! But I still wouldn’t go see it.
Oh, hi…Happy Friday and Happy February! Welcome to our 25th show – that’s a quarter of 100!
Ramblin Jackson News: Facebook’s IPO
This Wednesday Facebook Inc. filed for an initial public offering \that could value the social network between $75 billion and $100 billion, putting the company on track for one of the biggest U.S. stock-market debuts of all time.
VO: According to the Wall Street Journal, “The company hopes to raise as much as $10 billion when it begins selling shares this spring, said people familiar with the matter. Potential buyers got their first look at its financials Wednesday, which showed the company produced a $1 billion profit last year from $3.71 billion in revenues. The company derives 85% of those revenues from advertising, with the rest from social gaming and other fees.”
So does this mean for you, the average Facebook user who doesn’t have the cash to buy shares just yet. Well, only time will tell, but after Facebook goes public — there will be more pressure for Facebook to generate revenue.
Facebook currently generates 85% of its revenue from advertising. In my opinion, I bet we’ll see a lot more changes, and a lot more advertising, and whether we “Like” Facebook changes and continue using Facebook will ultimately determine the company’s success.
What do you think will change? Let us know in the comments.
Really Remarkable Report: 5 things to do on a snow day
Well, assuming the big snowstorm is happening as you watch this (‘cause if you didn’t know, we shoot these on Thursdays…), hopefully you didn’t even have to go in to work today. So, what to do with your snowday? Here are 5 suggestions!
1) Update your Facebook profile – maybe even to the new Timeline feature!
2) Find fun videos on YouTube. Many of Sunday’s Super Bowl commercials are already available to see. While we’re not wild about them blowing the surprise, if you’re not interested in watching the game, you can still see all the spots that will be talked about on Monday!
3) Login to LinkedIn and make sure everything is up to date. If not, get it updated!
4) Read a book. In case you’ve forgotten — they’re these things made with paper and they’re full of great information. [CHRIS] They’re also available on iPads!
5) Lastly, if you’re feeling creative, homey, and domestic, make your own soup from scratch. One of my favorite websites for recipes is AllRecipes.com. It’s a social network for foodies… and it’s great.
Now, we sure hope it’s snowing today… otherwise, we’ll look like a bunch of doofuses.
Pro Tip: Shovel Safely!
With all this snow, you’ll probably have to shovel it at some point. But how can do you do it without hurting yourself? Here are a few tips from the Colorado Comprehensive Spine Institute.
Choose a snow shovel that is right for you!
Be sure that your shovel has a curved handle, as this enables you to keep your back straighter when shoveling.
Obtain a shovel with an appropriate length handle. The length is correct when you can slightly bend your knees, flex your back 10 degrees or less, and hold the shovel comfortably in your hands at the start of the “shoveling stroke”.
A plastic shovel blade will generally be lighter than a metal one, thus putting less strain on your spine.
Sometimes, a smaller blade is better than a larger blade. Although a small blade can’t shovel as much, it avoids the risk of trying to pick up a too heavy pile of snow with a larger blade.
Remember that wet snow can be very heavy. One full shovel load can weigh as much as 25 pounds.
Push the snow, do not lift it. Pushing puts far less strain on the spine than lifting.
And of course, the best tip – and our favorite – is to find someone else to do it for you! Happy shoveling!
Gather ‘round everybody, because now you can finally get valuable insight into the happenings and learnings of the most important and hard-working person of any company: the intern! My name is Nate Reed, and I’m the newest intern here at Ramblin Jackson. Every week I will be divulging everything I’ve learned so far with my time here, and if you follow along, you may just learn some things as well!
Last week was my first week, and to my surprise I didn’t hear “I’ll take my coffee with sugar” a single time. In fact, there was no mention of coffee at all. What I did hear, however, were some important things to get me acquainted with how business is handled at Ramblin Jackson, including:
· How to use Google docs in order to easily share and edit information with others
· How to create a Wisestamp signature for gmail in order to have a catchy, consistent signature with any information relevant to yourself or a company
· Where to find everything and anything pertaining to social media news, at mashable.com
· The use of Wildfire to create a Social Media Sweepstakes for a local business
· How Facebook tracks the success of advertisements, and charges accordingly
· The success of a Facebook sweepstakes leads to the gathering of e-mail addresses, which leads to a potentially successful e-mail marketing campaign
All this is what I learned in just my first week, so I’m sure there’s much more to come. Come back next week to see if ever get that chance to go fetch coffee, because, after all, isn’t that what an internship is all about! Unless you’re one of those people who thinks internships should be about gathering practical information in an engaging manner to one-day use in the real world…but that’s just crazy.
Oh, hi…Happy Friday! Welcome to our 24th show! Speaking of “24,” you know Chris, if my last name was Bauer, I’d only have 23 hours and 59 minutes from now to save the world from terrorists…
Chris: Get goin!
Facebook Timeline Will Soon Be Mandatory
Last December Facebook introduced Timeline, a new kind of profile that lets you highlight photos, posts and life events in a more visually narrative layout. Over the next few weeks, everyone on Facebook will get timeline, whether they “Like” it or not. Luckily, while you’re switching, you’ll have a 7-day preview period before your Friends see your new timeline. According to Facebook’s Blog, Timeline will eventually come out for Fan Page pages to so that users have a consistent experience across the social network, and they hope to make Pages more consistent with the Timeline in the future, but they have nothing further to share at this time.
Really Remarkable Report: ThinFilm Food Sensor
Ugh, suddenly I’m not feeling so well. I wonder if I should’ve eaten that two-week-old beef stroganoff last night. Makes you wonder how your local supermarket makes sure you’re not buying expired perishables! Well, soon, they could have help…
Sensors are currently in development that monitor perishable items like food and pharmaceuticals by tracking its temperature to determine if it’s ok to eat or use. The so-called “ThinFilm” resembles a thin, transparent sticker that would be placed on such items and track their shelf life – triggering a notice to dispose of expired foodstuffs when necessary. The sensors could start appearing in your local supermarket as early as next year.
Pro Tip: Switch to Timeline, right now.
Although Facebook will soon mandate that everyone switch to Timeline, if you set it up early, you’ll have a 7-day preview period to make changes to your new Timeline profile before your friends can see it.
We recommend working on it this soon. To learn more about how to switch to Timeline before it’s mandated, visit Facebook.com/about/timeline
And if you really want to learn how the new changes to Facebook will impact your business, come to our Facebook + Email Marketing Workshop with Constant Contact at the University of Denver’s Craig Hall on February 8th. Learn more about that and watch our video at RamblinJackson.com/events
That’s all the time we have for this week, we hope you have a great weekend! We’ll be back next week with a regular show. As always, please let us know what you think in the comments or on our Facebook Page.
Oh, hi…Happy Friday! Welcome to the 23rd feature of Friday’s Informal Facebook Films. Well, it seems the winds of change have been blowing lately – literally! This week, we’re talking SOPA!
Unless you’ve been completely off the grid for this past week, you’ve probably heard rumblings about SOPA – the Stop Online Piracy Act; and PIPA – the Protect Intellectual Property Act. As these 2 bills have been making their way through congress, you might not have paid much attention, thinking they don’t really have any impact on you. Well, if you enjoy using the Internet how it exists today, that stance couldn’t be more wrong! We feel this issue is so important, in fact, that we’re dedicating today’s show to the subject.
So, what ARE these bills and what DO they mean to you? Here’s a video that explains it simply and effectively.
Scary stuff! Fortunately, as of this recording, congressional representatives are dropping their support for SOPA and PIPA right and left – thanks in part to a protest on January 18th that saw many popular sites like Wikipedia go dark. Still, voting is scheduled to begin next week – on January 24th – and, if you feel like we do, PLEASE get involved and make your voice heard.
To protest SOPA/PIPA, we recommend you sign a petition, call your congressional representatives, tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter and – just generally get involved! We’ve included links in our show notes on how you can accomplish many of these things.
Welcome to the 22nd feature of Friday’s Informal Facebook Films!
Ramblin Jackson News
This past week was CES! For those not in the know, that’s the Consumer Electronics Show – in Vegas – where hundreds of new electronic devices were introduced to the masses. Among the highlights – it’s evidently the year of the Ultrabook! What’s that? Well, basically take a MacBook Air, add Windows and a different brand name and shake. It seems like nearly every major manufacturer is introducing one for 2012.
Other interesting tidbits include: Vlingo – already a personal assistant app for smartphones – may soon be available on some “smarter TVs” in conjunction with your local cable provider. Assuming those agreements happen, Vlingo will use Siri-like navigation to suggest new programs you might enjoy and also makes navigating your TV guide that much easier. It’ll even update your Facebook page!
Finally, do you ever wish you could print things – in 3D? Soon you’ll be able to! MakerBot Industries introduced the Replicator – a 3D printer capable of creating objects made from two different colors. With it, you’ll be able to create objects as large as 8.9 inches x 5.7 inches x 5.9 inches. Not bad! Price? It’s $1,800 for the a single-color version and $2,000 for the dual-extruder option.
Ramblin Jackson’s Really Remarkable Report – Old People Suits…
MIT has developed an old person suit to simulate the effects of aging.
Pro Tip – Asana Task Management Tool
I am extremely excited about this week’s pro tip. For the last year, we’ve tried several different project management programs — and none of them seemed like a good fit. But within about 20 minutes of trying Asana, we were hooked, mainly because it’s so easy to use.
Asana is a task management program that allows you to keep your projects on track, assign tasks to your teammates, and more. And best of all — it’s extremely intuitive, and there are some decent mobile apps so you can use it on the go. And did I mention that it’s free if you have under 30 users? Consider this for your team.
