We’ve all been there before. I’m talking about the endless search for the perfect typeface to fit your A+ design. Well, search no longer. For all those times when you can’t seem to find the perfect font, we’ve put together a step-by-step tutorial for creating one on your own.
Problem: Help, I can’t find the font I want for a design I’m working on! Solution: Make your own, from scratch Time Investment: 1-2 hrs Level: Easy Cost: FREE Tools: Medium-Thick, black felt pen, printer and scanner
Download and then print the template provided. Simple.
Next, you can spend as little or as much time as you’d like writing or drawing each letter of the alphabet.
After you’ve perfected your new, one-of-a-kind font, scan your art as grayscale with 300dpi.
Save it as a JPG, TIFF or PNG. Note: The maximum file size that can be uploaded is 2 MB.
Home stretch… Now, upload your document to MyScriptFont and within seconds, you’ll have a font you can easily download in a number of different formats.
Install your new font, and start designing!
Ideas for use: Personal letters, custom website fonts, posters, online signatures, invitations and so much more! Use your imagination, use your skills and have fun with your new font.
From one designer to another… Enjoy!
-Amy Thackery
Amy has been in the graphic design and marketing field for the better part of the last 13 years. Her clients might describe her working style as super collaborative, incredibly smart, 100% non-egotistical, sort-of cool, and optimistically forward-thinking.
As part of the Mambo team, I had the opportunity to attend last week’s eMarketing Summit and the luncheon keynote panel, “Think Tank: Next Gen Social.” The panel was eloquently hosted by our very own Siouxsie Jennett and featured distinguished guests: Katja Asaro of Henry V Events, Jennifer Davis of Planar Systems, and Frank Mungeam of KGW. Over the course of the hour, we heard lively discussion from the panelists about how social media is changing the way their businesses work. Check out Frank’s Storify recap of the #emsvw social feed as well.
Mambo team: Krystal, Julie, Danielle, Briana and Laurel
Three ideas that stood out to me:
Planar’s Jennifer Davis comments on the convergence of social media and digital signage
Public speaking is becoming more unplanned and conversational. You will notice now that during most presentations, audience eyes are looking down at a device and not at the person speaking. Speaking events have been forever changed from a planned one-way delivery of content from the speaker to the audience into an almost improve-like experience. Social media has become a tool for audience members to give real-time feedback, and provides the speaker an opportunity to adjust the message mid-stream to engage and hold attention. In this case, our savvy panel sourced content from the audience using the hashtag #emsw.
The panel shared so many examples of other ways social media wrests control from an individual or small group and awards it to the masses for benefit of all. Not only does social media change the presenter/audience dynamic, we learned that it has fundamentally changed how traditional media outlets, such as broadcast TV, tap new leads for unique, unduplicated community perspective. We were offered repeated examples of how powerful it can be when organizations make social media everyone’s responsibility and truly listen to the conversations that its audiences are having. As Jennifer Davis summed it up, it’s no longer B2B or B2C, but B2P (person).
Convergence of social media with technology platforms is getting even more interesting. In the case of digital signage, an existing technology can be used to create entirely new, immersive experiences. Mambo’s VividWall is a perfect example. Our digital natives are so used to turning toward screens, anything printed is nearly lost on them. A whole new area of opportunity emerges when you pair social media conversations with interactive digital signage platforms, especially when it comes to events.
A special thanks to Greg Harned, our resident mixologist, for keeping the panel especially lively.
Greg Harned mixes refreshments for our panelists
A toast to kick things off: Katja Asaro, Frank Mungeam, Jennifer Davis and Siouxsie Jennett
The SoMe Awards recognize the best social media projects, programs and campaigns of the year. This year, the event promises to be bigger than ever with 47 finalists from 34 organizations across the United States!
The SoMe Awards will be held Thursday, May 16th from 6:30 to 9 pm. Join us at the Fez Ballroom to celebrate creativity in social media, and join us again in the tweet stream at #SoMeAwards. Reserve your seat today.
It’s tough enough keeping up with the massive proliferation of social media channels over the last few years. But what will marketing look like five years from now? Which trends will be important enough to impact marketing and our lives? Maybe more importantly, in terms of time and resource investment, what channels and trends can we ignore?
I asked three very sharp colleagues to join me at the eMarketing Summit to ponder these questions and have a lively discussion on where technology meets anthropology, and what it all means to marketers and their customers.
This panel of seasoned marketing professionals will discuss the inevitable convergence of traditional media, including television, events and digital signage, with the new kid on the block – social media. What does coordinated social engagement look like in the future landscape? How will this futurescape impact your marketing decisions today? And what should you invest in to stay ahead of the game and set yourself apart from your competition?
Meet the Fabulous Panelists
Frank Mungeam is the Director of Digital Media with KGW Media Group. He and his General Manger DJ Wilson have spearheaded an ambitious evolution for a broadcast company – how to stay relevant, cutting edge and profitable in a world of user-generated content and free content. His perspective on the power of the audience in driving content is sure to make you think.
Jennifer Davis is the Vice President of Marketing with Planar Systems, producers of some of the best digital signage equipment in the world. Jennifer and team are leading the charge in place-based advertising and personalization in digital signage. She’s fascinated with gamification and the convergence of social and signage that will create very interesting group dynamics in the future.
Katja Asaro is the Managing Director of Henry V Events. She has traveled the world producing live, interactive events for some of the biggest brands. Katja will discuss how social is already greatly changing the event landscape, and help us envision what events will look like in the future.
Join me and my panelists for a highly interactive and thought-provoking glimpse into the future.
Discount for Mambo Friends!
As a friend of Mambo, you have access to eMarketing Summit on May 2nd and the SoMe (Social Media) Awards happening May 16 at a discounted price ($89). I hope you will join me at my panel and for the day. Use the following discount code when you register: EMS89GRP
Many of you have learned about our Mambo methodology for thought leader identification, segmentation and engagement. You may even have read my previous blog post on event lead nurturing. This week, I have been managing thought leader (social influencer) outreach in Twitter for a client event, and I wanted to share how we approached event influencer identification.
It’s easy to make the recommendation to someone else that they should “reach out” to everyone on their thought leader list. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between outreach and annoyance. I’m always sensitive to the possibility of people (and yes, “social influencers” truly ARE people, not just numbers in a spreadsheet) feeling like they’re receiving spam in Twitter, especially when it comes via their email Inbox. Building relationships before an event is the best way to improve your outreach comfort level.
Why Share Event Information with Influencers?
Your reasons for contacting social influencers to share event details will depend on your goals. Before an event, you may hope for increased registrations from your target audience. During and after an event, you may want to share announcements made or assets created (photos, videos, etc.). You may want to:
Give influencers the event hashtag, and ask them to retweet any tweets that catch their eye
Share the URL to your event registration page, and ask them to write a blog post about it
Give them early information about an announcement that will be made at the event, so they can begin to write a blog post or article
Send them the URL to an event video, and ask them to share it with their networks
Questions to Ask
List the Twitter thought leaders who typically tweet about the topics of your event, and then ask these questions about each influencer:
Is he/she following our Twitter account?
If so, the influencer will be more open to hearing from you directly
Reach out to most of your contacts via DM (those who are following you) to avoid sending more than a few personal tweets per day and making them visible in your public feed
If you must send tweets to people who aren’t following you, please avoid copy/pasting the exact same tweet to multiple influencers. Take the time to vary tweet content, even if the meaning is the same.
Have we had previous Direct Message conversations with that influencer?
When you open the window to send or receive a DM, previous DM conversations are visible. You may see that you’ve previously sent DMs to social influencers to thank them for a blog post or comment on something they had promoted. In these cases, influencers will most likely be more open to receiving a DM from you about your event.
How much regular daily interaction do we have with that influencer?
You may notice that the more frequent your daily interaction with a certain influencer (retweeting or tweeting about his/her content, linking to influencer content in a blog post), the more comfortable you’ll feel about sending a DM to him/her
Don’t hesitate to remove someone from your list if a quick study of their tweets shows a negative response to others who reach out to them
How to Determine the ROI of Event Outreach
Keep an eye on your social influencers after you contact them to determine:
How many of them responded in some way (RTs, tweets, blog posts, comments, etc.)
Of those who did respond, what is their reach? For example, if an influencer tweeted about your event, take note of how many followers he/she has
Did you receive any negative responses from your social influencers who didn’t want to be contacted directly? If so, be sure to put them on a DNC (Do Not Contact) list for future announcements.
As you’ve likely realized, event outreach doesn’t only require effort at the time of an event. Everyday engagement with your thought leaders helps pave the way for those moments when you hope they will be willing to share your event content with their networks.
What other questions do you ask when you’re choosing influencers to contact about an event?
If you’ve been following along with the social media news I’m sure you’ve noticed at least a few headlines describing new changes on Facebook. First there’s the new newsfeed, then the photo rules and now the upcoming inclusion of Hashtags. But what does all this mean for you and your business? Let’s find out! Follow us on our new series: Facebook Revealed as we explore how to make the most out of your Facebook posts, optimize your page and make the most of the recently released features.
Facebook Revealed: How Does Your EdgeRank?
EdgeRank is Facebook’s semi-secret formula that determines how often your posts are seen by your friends and likers (those who like you page, commonly referred to as fans). For quite some time Facebook has been combing through posts and serving them up to on average 30% of a pages fans, but as of last September things dramatically changed. Facebook rolled out an algorithm update that looked as though it reduced post reach (the number of fans who see each post) from 30% on average to as low as 5% depending on the page. Although there has been some debate as to how much the new update has changed a page’s EdgeRank one thing remains clear: brands can’t ignore its effect.
So how does this magical formula work? It takes a look at the pages Affinity (u), the relationship between the page and each individual fan based on how often the fan views and interacts with your posts as well as how well you engage your fans in general. It also assigns a Weight (w) for the edge type, meaning the interactions fans have with the particular post (comment, like, tag, share, etc.) as well as time Decay (d) how much time has passed since the last edge (engagement) was created.
What does that fancy formula mean? It means there are really four things that affect whether or not a fan will see your post.
Has the fan interacted with the page before? The more active someone is on your page the more likely they are to see your posts.
How are others reacting to this particular post? The more people that like and share it the more it will be seen, the more people ignore it or hide it or mark it as spam the less it will be seen.
How has the fan interacted with posts of the same type? If a fan commonly likes photos, then photos are more likely to show up on their newsfeed.
Complaints: This is the biggest change since September: If fans are hiding or marking your posts as spam, your EdgeRank will quickly plummet as it sends a strong message to Facebook that your content is of little or no value.
Now that you have a basic understanding of what EdgeRank is, lets discuss a few things you can do to help your page increase its reach and engagement rate.
Pay attention to the content you are posting. If your posts have a low reach, chances are they’re also not doing well in terms of engagement (likes, shares and tags), so change up your content strategy to supply posts that your fans want to interact with. Always ask yourself before posting something, “Is this interesting, useful and engaging?” If not, don’t post it.
Consider the type of posts. As of late status posts (those with text only) receive a higher reach, but be cautious as they also usually have a lower engagement, so it can be a quick win with a long term price if not done properly. If you are going to post text only updates, make sure it’s appealing and is something your audience is sure to like or interact with. Visuals such as photos tend fare better on engagement but once again, make sure it’s a truly engaging image or it won’t do much good.
Post at key times. There are a variety of tools out there that can help you determine what times of days are best to post for your particular audience. Follow these guidelines as well as your own research to find out when you have the best likelihood of reaching your fans and having them engage with your post, higher engagement turns into higher reach which in turn leads to better EdgeRank.
Make sure you’re not flooding the stream. Each time you post content you will affect your page’s EdgeRank, so it’s better to post great content less often, then frequently publishing content that is lacking luster. Weak content can cause your EdgeRank to suffer and may turn your fans away.
Create calls to action. We’re not talking about making every post a sales pitch, but you can always write a post in a way that encourages people to find out more information or take a look at a the full article, clicks still count as engagement, they just don’t carry as much weight as shares and likes.
Check your insights. As a page admin there is a vast amount of information available at your fingertips. Take a look at your page’s insights for trends in how posts perform based on timing, topics, post type, frequency and more.
Watch your negative feedback. In the insights section you can export your data into an Excel or CSV (comma-separated values) file. If your posts aren’t doing so well to take a look at the post level data and pay attention to negative feedback, you may notice fans are hiding your content and thereby reducing your EdgeRank. If that’s the case consider changing not posting that type of content in the future, or maybe rewording those posts or the tone of voice in those posts to avoid future negative feedback.
Do you have any other tips or success stories? We’d love to hear from you.
Despite the ever-shifting communication landscape due to the increased use of social media, email is one channel that has proved it’s here to stay. Even though email is sticking around, this doesn’t mean that the way we manage our email can’t improve. Microsoft and Google, and their respective email platforms Outlook and Gmail, have attempted to tame the beast through filters, tags, colors, priority inbox folders, stars, and search. Despite these organizational tools, most of us have yet to experience the elusive “inbox zero.” This philosophy was created by productivity blogger Merlin Mann, creator of 43folders.com, with the goal to “reclaim your email, your attention, and your life” by keeping your inbox as clean and brain-free as possible.
Mailbox for iPhone is a simple app with a revolutionary idea that delivers on the promise to make “inbox zero” an achievable goal. The goal of Mailbox is to minimize the time spent in your mailbox by learning to treat your email inbox like a to-do list. Many emails do not require an immediate response, yet flood our inbox causing a frantic use of whatever organizational system we have in place just to sort through the jungle of messages. Mailbox accomplishes the “to-do list” mentality with one-swipe triggering pre-populated options such as Later Today, This Evening, Tomorrow, Next Week, or Pick Date. You can also drag and drop emails to sort by priority, which drastically changes the way in which you can interact with your email. The user interface is exceptional with an emphasis on simplicity, productivity, and a trend toward a texting and instant message style interface that makes rapid-fire one line emails manageable.
Mailbox also engaged an unusual and effective marketing tactic allowing users to download the app despite the existing waiting list to actually use the app. While you wait to use the features, the application serves as a counter to gauge your position in the waiting process. The reason behind the wait is to provide Mailbox with adequate time to ramp up their servers in order to provide the highest quality experience for all active users (hopefully much quicker now that they have been purchased by Dropbox for an undisclosed sum). Whether intentional or not, the buzz from this on tech blogs and social media channels has been tremendous. Thousands of users are now opening an app, which ostensibly provides nothing, to simply wait in line. Genius marketing.*
*UPDATE- Since this article was published, Mailbox has been acquired by Dropbox which provided additional resources to onboard everyone in the waiting list, and remove the reservation system. Download Mailbox and let us know what you think.
I look forward to discovering more mobile applications that enhance productivity and leave more time for high-value activities.
Everyone’s had those moments when you realize you’ve probably been staring at your phone for way too long. It’s those moments when you know you should paying attention to something more important. Maybe you thought, “If only I could be at 500 places at once!”
Well, here’s your chance.
Google just unveiled its latest contribution to the “It’s 2013, why don’t we have flying cars already?” race: Google Glass. This has been a trending topic ever since Google announced the first prototypes of Glass, and the video definitely provides a window into what the oh-so-near future may hold.
Though new technology like this always takes a few generations to really perfect (I’m looking at you, iPhone), this is clearly the biggest leap forward for mobile technology since the touchscreen. It will be interesting to see how these glasses either replace, or work with, consumers’ cell phones.
More information on Google Glass can be found here.
Cascade Coil Drapery installation at Salt Ultra Lounge at the iPic Theater.
Mambo had the privilege of partnering with locally based manufacturer, Cascade Coil, to develop a new digital marketing platform with the goal of generating new leads, enhancing service and introducing online selling. We were not only happy to support a thriving local manufacturer in an age of overseas outsourcing, but also love their really amazing product line. They make both gorgeous and highly effective metal fabric used for modern design, energy efficiency and even safety applications. Mambo was hired to develop a new website and ecommerce system as well as social media strategy for the company.
On the face of it, digital marketing – especially social media — for a traditional manufacturer seems like a difficult fit. However, common tenants still apply, making it fit rather nicely. Here are three rules of modern marketing that every manufacturer can employ.
1. Go Where Your Audience Is: Manufacturers make tangible products for people to buy. Your audience, therefore, is relatively easy to identify. If your audience is active on social media then having a presence there is a perfect match, not only for lead generation but also for crowd sourcing new concepts, trends and solutions. In Cascade Coil’s case, a huge part of their customer base is represented by architect and design firms. We created a new Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest channel to connect organically into where these audiences already were and naturally inserted Cascade Coil’s message into conversations.
2. Visual Content is King: Creating a tangible product also means you can easily create visual content. When implemented as such, Cascade Coil’s product is a visually stunning work of art, which lends itself perfectly to the new visual content trend in digital marketing. With an extensive and growing library of beautiful installations globally, Cascade Coil was naturally poised to leverage this tenant.
3. Utilize Digital Tools to Facilitate Business Objectives: Cascade Coil’s customer base is varied by industry, application and location. To pave the way to better service customer needs and facilitate prospective partnerships, we created touchpoints within the new website for each of these audiences. Dealers and resellers have their own lead form and password-protected portal, while end consumers are now able to purchase applicable products online directly from the company.
How have you used modern marketing to transform your business?
Did you know the brain processes visual stimulation 60,000 times faster than the written word? And yet as digital marketers we continue to put great emphasis on text, sometimes neglecting to add visual cues completely. In this digital age of information overload where we are creating content at unprecedented rates, how can your message or story be noticed, let alone be memorable? The answer: Tell it visually!
The above photo was released by President Obama’s staff on election night with the caption, “Four more years.” And although the photo was actually taken in August at a campaign rally, the staff recognized how powerful the image was and what story it told — peace in a storm; triumph over turmoil; love conquers all. This is the most-liked photo on Facebook and most retweeted photo of all time.
Understanding Your Audience Using the 7 Fascination Triggers
Sally Hogsheadspeaks of the 7 fascination triggers for humans and how brands can leverage these triggers to fascinate their audiences:
Power
Passion
Mystique
Prestige
Alarm
Rebellion
Trust
For example, coupon sites effectively use “Alarm” as a trigger by giving you a limited time to take advantage of a screamin’ deal. If you don’t act now, you will lose. Every time I open one of these emails or see one of these offers my heart skips a beat. Do I need a new 4-piece living room set in orange Naugahyde? I’ve never (ever) considered it before, but now that I see it in living color with the alarm bells ringing and a deadline looming I find myself sending my husband a link with a “What do you think?” subject header. Thankfully, he ignores most of these impulses.
Video Storytelling and Vine
With the acquisition of Vine by Twitter, we will begin to see a preponderance of short-form videos that tell simple stories. Vine, like Twitter, challenges the content developer to distill the message while not stripping it of its essence, only via video. Vine presents an amazing opportunity for brands to leverage user-generated content (UGC) as people start developing Vine videos around their favorite products. Below is an example of a Coke™ fan’s passion for the iconic drink. VineRoulette allows you to view Vine videos without being in the app.
Content Developers, Take Notice! Tips to Infuse Visual Stimulation
As a content developer (and that’s every marketer on the planet these days!) it’s important to think of your audiences as visual consumers first, and readers a distant second. Think of your next message as a picture or set of pictures, then sprinkle the text images to support your story. Statistically, social media posts with photos are shared 2X as much as regular text, and videos are shared 12X as much (HubSpot). With that in mind, it becomes even more compelling to associate your message with visuals.
In closing, I’ll leave you with 5 tips for infusing visual stimulation into your content….presented visually, of course!
