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incarnateirony · 4 years

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That heaven meta you wanted

And a little more on souls, but I already have a 40 page meta on that topic in particular.

So someone asked if I had heaven meta, and I pointed out yes, but littered through many other topics involving things like souls, false duality, absence, the One True Thing and whatever else in my crazy-ass pagan life tag.

So the first cue here is to absolutely stop thinking of heaven as a place. The beginning mental exercise in abstraction is to apply two things.

One from Dabb’s Dark Side of the Moon: It’s “A bunch of places.” also, from 15.13, I want people to niche talk of the Occultum. It’s a Place, and a Thing. It doesn’t exist in any particular created space, but rather, outside of a particular space.

I find that in our training to think inside three dimensional space and linear time, certain details of all of this get lost. The one “place” to consider will be the Axis Mundi, and “The Garden.” -- the Axis Mundi as the road of thought that ties it together, perceived as a white hall by angels or anything from a river (like Styx) or a road (for Dean) to man. Just like in DSOTM, “for some it’s god’s throne, for others it’s Eden” at the “center of it all”. Angels perceive god’s throne. The Winchesters perceived a garden, they just perceived a different garden than Jack’s baby brain. Yes, I am implying the occultum is essentially the same place as god’s throne despite the absence of angels, and even that paradox is something I’m going to touch on inside this.

Now before I get into making everyone have to think like delirious stoners, I’m going to share with you one delightful mental image of, in DSOTM, Zachariah actually sighting Dean toot tooting down a white hallway floating on an invisible car only he perceives.

Okay, now, to the real meat of this.

Have we all stopped thinking of heaven as a place yet? Because again, stop. Stop thinking of it as a place. It’s a lot of little non-places. It is not in our three dimensional universe. In fact, our three dimensional universe may just be tucked inside of one of a million little pockets of the heavens. The idea of the heavens should not be broken down and tried to pack to make sense within the universe, but the universe should be made to make sense within the heavens.

ASH: See, you gotta stop thinking of heaven as one place. It’s more like a butt-load of places all crammed together. Like Disneyland except without all the anti-Semitism.

Dean and Sam still look confused.

SAM: Disneyland?

ASH: Mm-hmm. Yeah. See you got Winchesterland. (He holds up his hands to indicate the bar.) Ashland. (He points all around outside the bar.) A whole mess of everybody-else-lands. Put them all together: heaven. Right? At the center of it all? Is the Magic Kingdom. The Garden.

For now I’m going to forego arguing the absurdist circles reads on this section of canon and explaining fundamental things like Ash as an unreliable narrator and how honestly absolutely fucking irrelevant and outright hysterical that this is what the fandom focuses on rather than the whole vat of cosmoconception, gnostic thought and baudrillard ideas floating around in here, sure, we’re gonna bicker with alt shippers over them misreading what Ash says about soulmates, an idea that didn’t even exist mythologically until the 19th century --lol, we’ll move past that and focus on the meat.

The center of it all is the garden. Check.

Like, meditate if you need to. I need people to let that go. Let go of old fandom wank. Let go of heaven being a space, but rather a lot of nonspaces. Time is not a thing there. Space, really, is only as far of a thing as people perceive it within their own little mental domains. Perception rules all.

Heaven is the place of the Mind.

CASTIEL: (on radio) Please, listen. This spell, this connection, it’s difficult to maintain.

DEAN: Wait. If I’m in heaven, then where’s Sam?

CASTIEL: (on radio) What do you see?

DEAN: What do you mean ‘what do I see’?

CASTIEL: (on radio) Some people see a tunnel or a river. What do you see?

DEAN: Nothing. My dash. I’m in my car. I’m on a road.

CASTIEL: (on radio) Alright. A road. For you it’s a road. Follow it, Dean. You’ll find Sam. (The radio is breaking up.) Follow the road. (The radio dies.)

And importantly,

SAM: This is heaven’s Garden?

DEAN: It’s-it’s nice… ish. I guess.

JOSHUA: You see what you want to here. For some it’s God’s throne room; for others it’s Eden. You two, I believe it’s the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. You came here on a field trip.

So beyond this, the only other mention we have of the axis mundi if you search supernatural transcripts is in Inside Man, where the hallway is acknowledged in unspoken text in Inside Man, when Bobby breaks out of his little mental box with Sam’s prompting.

“Axis” remains the same from Latin. “Mundi” means:

toilet/dress (woman), ornament, decoration (uh, not this one)

universe, heavens (this one)

world, mankind (and this one)

Both of these ones. Bear through.

Now, this tracks, actually, if you think about heaven’s perspective there as from the angels we had the previous view seasons. We see the human perspectives in their own boxes, but when they step out rather than seeing a river, or a road, we see a white hall. These white halls, however, do lead to a white throne room that was god’s, rather than the road leading to a garden.

So again, You see what you want to here. For some it’s God’s throne room; for others it’s Eden.

Okay, so, let’s recenter this, using Ash’s statement, at “the center of it all.” -- the garden. The Axis mundi flows to/from it, and along the way the “heavens” are there, but “heaven” as an idea comes with a lot of dogmatic associations I think makes people dig in their heels a little bit and think in... well, boxes. So instead of calling these “heavens”, moving forward I’m going to call them Thought-Boxes, alright? I want to detach any sort of christian coding you’ve attached to this in your brain and think about them as Thought-Boxes built by memories of the people using their greatest hits.

So let’s talk a little bit more about these Thought-Boxes. For example, in Byzantium, we see Jack in his own. During his time there, he’s living a greatest hit from around the time of Tombstone that was sort of an offscreen fill in. Now, Jack -- possibly from being half angel -- starts experiencing “seeing through” the parts that don’t make this real. There’s a break, a glitch if you will. The people that are there simply aren’t there. There are no souls to these, maybe there’s not even bodies.

But despite this, even once he vacates, the place maintains physical properties. The physical props are there. They detect that Jack had been gone because his burger went cold. This seems like an irrelevant detail but it very much is not. I’m going to ask everybody to put a tack in this.

We can go on about the idea of abrupted memories leading to disappearing people in, for example, Dark Side of the Moon again. Fizzlefffft, baby Sam was gone once Dean cued into something not being right. But the environment remained, this imprint of a built space, a shadow of a memory.

But I’m going to go on to Thought-Boxes. Because Thought-Boxes don’t end at these heaven things. Thought-Boxes were with GadreelSam, with Casifer, with DeanMichael. I’m sure everyone wants to say “That’s not the same!!!” but... is it really different?

(Distantly hears someone yell YES)

No.

(YES)

No.

(Y-)

No, it really isn’t. Even ignoring the onset of the fact that entering Dean’s headspace in Nihilism was reflective of the Empty itself, there’s even more to this.

CHUCK:

Listen, you guys know me.

I'm hands-off.

I built the sandbox -- you play in it.

You want to fight Leviathans?

Cool. You got that.

You want to go up against -- what was it? -- the "British Men of Letters"?

Okay.

Little weak, but okay.

Okay cool, while this right here also had a bunch of subtext: such as, Chuck sort of entailing how he keeps them occupied, or that he built the sandbox but not the brings playing inside of it, I’m going to roll people back to remember what was going on inside Michael-Dean’s head, where Dean stayed complicit from a mix of contentment and battle.

SAM Cass, wait a second. Would Michael bury Dean in trauma?

CASTIEL (dropping his hand and turning towards Sam) What do you mean?

SAM I mean, Michael said it himself. The reason he left Dean in the first place was because Dean was fighting back so hard.

CASTIEL So, if Michael wanted to keep Dean placated...

SAM Dean thrives on trauma. I mean, he's had to his whole life, right? It keeps him alert, keeps him ready, but if I wanted to distract Dean, I-I... I'd give him something he's never had before.

CASTIEL Contentment.

SAM Exactly.

So maybe, instead of looking through his bad memories, maybe let's, uh... maybe let's look through his good memories.

Hmm. HMM. Where is this familiar? Thought-Boxes. Oh, and Thought-Boxes. Now, if you have ceased to think of heaven as a single place, but rather an infinite amount of non-spaces connected by a line of the mental road-- and I haven’t even GOTTEN to the Occultum part yet-- this should be ringing some bells right now.

DEAN It'll hold. My mind, my rules.

I got him. I'm the Cage.

Do not forget this. DO NOT FORGET THIS.

Now before I even deviate back to the full meaning of the Occultum, which will roll us back to the garden and the throne, I have a question for you: how is this different from Chuck having dominion in his own world? I mean people wanna yell IT’S REAL WORLD but I’m going to need everyone to stop. Because again, heaven is not a place within the universe. The universe is a place within the heavens. What divides it from being another Thought-Box beyond the fact that there are real souls in it, real people to have real experiences with?

This is actually the philosophical question of 15.2, but I’m not even ready to cross that bridge yet in this post. Thumbtack after thumbtack to keep track of, I know, but I’m getting to a point, I swear.

Chuck says in season 11 to Amara, “There’s a beauty, a glory in creation that’s greater than my pride or my ego. It was just there, waiting to be born. Since you’ve been free, I know that you’ve seen it. Felt it?” and looked to Amara. Amara also holds dialogue that Chuck and Amara were only Great because they stood in relation to each other, and he created the archangels to feel BIG, to make him feel LARGE. It was ego.

But that was just the beginning. This is... the rest.

youtube

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

What is it that keeps the world tick tick ticking in the absence of his oversight while he tries to corral stories for his Vision(TM)? Well, there’s a swiss watch, not too unlike hitler’s swiss watch that was like a horcrux, which saved his soul. But minding that the heavens themselves are timeless, what is it that commands that men live and move and eventually time?

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

God beholdens man to time. Because his own body is a cage. And I’ll even expand on that. And then, in confusion and fear, desperation to cling to life, one of several things happen.

Death is an infinite vessel.

I built the sandbox -- you play in it.

TESSA!REAPER It's my sandbox, I can make you see whatever I want.

...Death is an infinite vessel.

So let’s play a game. The clock stops for a person when the reaper comes to collect. Their time marching forward from Chuck’s sandbox, built over an infinite vessel of death, a firmament in which it exists-- that stops. They lose that cage, but may or may not still try to attach themselves to a universe.

They can no longer play in it properly. They watch it go by without them. They lose their minds, watching the things and people they love continue without them. They go mad and increase in power in spirit, and sometimes do lash out and become something else entirely.

T!REAPER Well, like you said. There's always a choice. I can't make you come with me. But you're not getting back in your body. And that's just facts. So yes, you can stay. You'll stay here for years. Disembodied, scared, and over the decades it'll probably drive you mad. Maybe you'll even get violent.

DEAN What are you saying?

T!REAPER Dean. How do you think angry spirits are born? They can't let go and they can't move on. And you're about to become one.

So what happens to those that do move on?

CASTIEL: Each soul in heaven is locked in its own private paradise. That's where you are now. You need to escape. You need to find the gate to earth and open it. Then you and I will find Metatron, the Scribe of God.

[...]

BOBBY: So, while I'm playing Steve McQueen, anyone gonna be looking for me?

CASTIEL: Everyone. The Angels will not like a soul wandering free.

First of all, Dabb using “locked” is not a fluke. Notice the phrasing. Locked. Escape. “The angels will not like a soul wandering free.” Heaven has become a caging system, and it is patrolled by the forces Chuck created to be those who execute his will, wavelengths of intent created by grace that, in theory, do not have their own souls*

I’m not going to go into the entire breakdown of why I hold Castiel has something of a viable soul as a deviation, because that’s it’s own meta and this is going to be ridiculous enough, but we need to stay on the ~general~ topic of heaven and souls and Thought Boxes.

Because this isn’t new either.

SAM

Since when do angels feed on humans?

HOLLOWAY

Since the dawn of man.

SAM

What are you talking about?

HOLLOWAY

Your souls... Are little slices of heaven.

SAM

And they've been hunting humans, making them create heavens in their minds and feeding off them.

Hopefully I don’t have to dig all the way back to remind everyone of the premise of the entire season 6 plot or the final point of S11, where human souls are the ultimate infinite power reactor, and he who has the most souls is god (and able to defeat the darkness, too), right?

We all are vaguely aware of that at least, right? That was the entire Castiel dark arc and why he tried to soak up Purgatory and declared himself God, right?

Okay.

So with that in mind, let’s look back at the watch--it’s like a horcrux. GodHitler saved Their Souls. Their Literal Souls. Tick, tick, tick. Man remains subject to time. The angels won’t like a soul wandering free. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

But that’s still just the beginning. This is... still the rest.

“The light was a LIE.” - Amara.

He who has the most souls is god. What puts off more light and energy, what do angels feed on, what do they fight to keep contained, what gives god his power, why must they remain caged? If I wanted to keep Humanity placated, I’d give it Contentment. Locked in its own little personal paradise. You have to escape. But angels won’t like souls wandering free.

“In the beginning, there was just me and sis. But I wasn’t satisfied.”

Your story. Not mine. Not ours.

“There are billions of us,” Kali decreed, “And we were here first.” - Hammer of the Gods, Dabb.

People think this stands in contrast with the idea of late seasons, under Dabb era, but I invite you to continue breaking the linear thought box.

If for example, there was something in creation greater than his pride or ego, waiting to be born--something that just is, as chuck and amara just were--maybe something just sleeping, waiting to find a meaning to exist, perhaps even a hidden forefather of the idea of Being and Absence that is Chuck and Amara, as darkness is only the Absence of Light--and if there was a glory in chuck’s creation greater than his pride or his ego that just happened to be born, only to reject him?

What was the mother of monsters? Eve. She was thrown to purgatory. Coincidental name?

THE GIRL: You must not be human. Humans may not enter here. Are you an angel?

JACK: Um, it's a long story. Why do humans have to stay out?

THE GIRL: This is the Garden. Man's beginning.

JACK: You mean...Eden. Like Adam and Eve?

THE GIRL: God loved them so. His prize creations, until he banished them and all of mankind from the perfection of the Garden. And he hid it away.

Alright so ignoring creepy girl sort of absent spitting Chuck propaganda while vague floating around, let’s actually pick at this while doubling back:

SAM: This is heaven’s Garden?

DEAN: It’s-it’s nice… ish. I guess.

JOSHUA: You see what you want to here. For some it’s God’s throne room; for others it’s Eden. You two, I believe it’s the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. You came here on a field trip.

Okay, remember the above commentary? About throne vs garden, and hidden away?

So a creation greater than his pride or his ego simply was in the first Thought Box designed. This is the literal original Thought Box. This is where man in its purest form cropped up. I do beg you to ask though: minding that this is where Jack was reborn in Soul, are we entirely certain the idea of a body is even mandated in what defines humanity at this point?

And moreover, why did Chuck hide it?

In other posts, I’ve covered how Jack’s dialogue with the snake is a reflection of the dialogue of Poimandres from the Corpus Hermeticum (x), and I’ve been banging on with that accursed chart you’re all probably sick to death on about the stages of development, but hopefully I’ve ingrained that into some of your subconsciouses by now.

CASTIEL: Yeah, he is. But, um, something's different. Jack is, uh -- well, he's been to the Garden. That's the crossroads of divinity and humanity. No one's been there since the exile till now.

The crossroads of divinity and humanity is man’s beginning. You might even call it the... AXIS MUNDI. The AXIS. Of HEAVEN AND MANKIND. Also I have another post about “the union by which life exists” (x) and if you dive into the source text linked in the Jack post you’ll also read about that idea too. And that’s without even going into me sobbing violently about the use of the Occultum itself, which it and its verse is part of the Art arcana with all the Thoth tarot stuff I been talking (x)

This union isn’t even new to SPN, it’s just been more low-key. For example, in “The Thing”, the alternate god pours out human blood as “Light” and grace as “Life.”

At a quick glance at the fandom, this seems backwards, unless we review that Chuck’s light was a lie, and that all things divine are powered by the soul as the One True Thing -- a whole alchemical thing you’ll find me spraying about in my souls, pagan life and general my meta tags. The very line Cas had about Absence of Good even comes from this, but I’ll diverge into that at a later time.

If the constructed mental universe, Chuck’s Thought Box that the humans are shoved into in bulk after the exile from the garden that he hid away, is what have the cages of bodies subject to time, then grace is ironically Life as we know it, as opposed to eternal light, whereas souls powering it are the true Light, but by it Life As We Know It Exists.

Now Chuck can punish those who rebel, retrofit them with cursed bodies like monsters or even, say, pagan gods that then catch the flack of blame despite “being there first.” be that being on earth before angels came kicking around or being in the proverbial nonspace before Chuck kicked them out of his pet project for being uppity.

In fact, does anyone notice the Leviathans and Shadow are not so different even in appearance? But they never got the development of a true life, they never got to explore themselves, they were only quasi-dark-divine beings left to suffer and eat each other and birthed what we call “monsters” which also, well, have souls.

So no, there’s not even a break in continuity with the pagan god timeline, it just takes breaking the linear thinking box going on, especially three dimensional+time based thinking. Because we’re operating outside of that. Circle back to beginning: Stop trying to make heaven function within the universe. Remember, the universe functions within the heavens.

But god hid the first Thought Box away. The Garden. Which is at the center of it all, the magic kingdom. Which some people see as god’s throne. Angels. See it as god’s throne. There, at the heart of the mundi. The beginning, the center, and the end.

Humans aren’t allowed there.

Angels don’t like souls wandering free.

Chuck made them to feel big.

And Humanity stays placated with Contentment.

In order to be in the occultum, the occultum must be in you.

Or as it is in alchemical practice:

VISITA RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM = visit the interior parts of the earth ; by rectification(purification) thou shalt find the hidden stone.

The philosopher’s stone isn’t a literal rock, it’s a manifestation of completion, finding the true self, making gold from the reflection of soul as the true thing through mind by exploring the body, both personal body and body of the earth.

These stages I’ve gonged on about start at phase one: Blackness, the Blackening, represented by the Inky Man and called the Shadow. This is not actually different from Jung’s use of the Shadow either.

The Shadow. The Thing that Rules the Empty, that was there before Chuck and Amara, and has no meaning to exist, who knows everything about you.

Can you throw a soul to the empty? Sure, I guess. Are we so sure that doesn’t just return you to the source? Even Amara says that when she eats souls, they live on as one within her. But if you are Within Absence, are you not simply Outside of Being?

If you dig deep enough in my pagan life or my meta tags, you’ll find me banging on about cosmoconception between the two, but it is fundamental to understand that the Soul even in alchemy is the One True Thing. The Mind reflects it, and by reflecting the Soul, it not only Observes but Creates the Body of the self and the World.

So again I point back up to stuff like Thought Boxes and Chuck as the Mind, and the maker of the first Thought Box where something had just been waiting to be born that was greater than him.

Who are you? Who are you meant to be?

I know who you hate, I know who you love. What do you want? Who are you? WHO. ART. THOU.

These are the critical stages of development, not even minding stuff like

I’ve gone on entire goddamn rants about the use of the blossom born out of putrefaction in purgatory, or the very meaning of putrefaction in the alchemical process: the breaking down and decay of a material of being to its blackened (shadow) state that leaves room for new growth to build on it over again.

If you skim these charts even passingly, which I have been posting on a loop for like 2 goddamn years, you’ll realize over those years Dabb has been playing paint-by-numbers across these points, because just like the other gnostic books or alchemical paths or cards I source, he’s using the source material. Just like Castiel’s quote about the absence of good. It’s all there.

This is ultimately an *aside* in a talk about Thought Boxes, but something worth touching on while we struggle across issues like the Soul, the Thought Box, and ultimately The Shadow. Because the Shadow is little more than the Shadow of man, often called in Alchemy The First Adam or The First Man. It is something beyond creation, even beyond the heavens, a paradox of itself I’ve spoken of before. Chuck is the demiurge religions call god; the Shadow of Man is the true god, and yet by living through the creation of the demiurge Logos, can become a more perfect god.

So rolling back to point:

In 15.2, Dean has a meltdown. Nothing in their lives is real, he declared. It was a dark and painful scene, but I feel in many ways fandom is still struggling to get past this road bump in the cosmogenic structure. What’s real then? Do they fight to go back to earth once they beat Chuck?

*pulls your thought box out of Chuck’s propaganda machine and HIS thought box*

The magic kingdom. The center of it all. The place man truly belongs. The throne. The garden. A nonplace and a thing hidden away and kept under lock and key and patrol.

What’s real? People, families. We are. Souls. That’s real. Souls are what power it all. Souls are what make one god. Souls are people and families. We are. Everything else here is commentary. They’re created spaces. And we can even create our own. The problem being we are caged apart in Chuck’s system to keep people placated, keep them in a system of control once his games subject to Time are done, but they stay distracted, never together, never able to resist.

...Open the door.

Just like Chuck did hell. Open the door. Open all of the doors. Set man free. Let him retake the throne, let him retake the garden. Let the walls be torn down and let them build new and infinite worlds.

Earth would be one of many heavens to still exist, but if Chuck was unplugged from controlling the souls in his codex of time, what power does he have? Nothing. Because the souls are God. Chuck is just a mind among many then, and those minds have since built diverse experiences inside the machine to create their own.

Sure, don’t just collapse earth. There’s still billions of us (hah, thanks Kali) that still have lives to live and decisions to make and autonomy to be had, loved ones to find. But free them of Chuck’s influence, build a better world, and leave a liberated heaven to enter.

I have propositions on the what-and-how this will go, among other things, but that’s beside the point in this already very long post.

If you’re still confused, I encourage you to view any of the videos I’ve posted over and over and over again, or skim my pagan life tag, or souls tag, or any of the related tags of this and, worst case if you’re still confused, send me an ask.

But the real reason Chuck banished Her? Why She Couldn’t Be Allowed To Exist?

He couldn’t stand it.

He knew they were equals.

#supernatural #spn #heaven #souls #pagan life #meta #my meta

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artificialqueens · 3 years

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Gimme Love, 1/9 (Miz Cracker/Blair St Clair) - Grinder

AN: Welp! I started this back in March. It was supposed to be a oneshot and then I realised it was 200 odd pages. Whoops! Another songfic based on music by Joji. This one is Gimme Love, which some of you would probably know, it was circling TikTok for a while. Anyway, more song fics to come!! I hope y'all enjoy! Stay safe in these crazy times!

TW: Mental health, panic attacks

1993

"OK, so you got your apple juice, your finger sandwiches, and grapes. And most importantly, you got your best outfit on. Ready?"

No. I wasn't ready. They were going to eat me up. I knew just by how the 3 bitches off to the side stared and laughed. One of them was swinging from the bus stop pole. It sounded evil, but I hoped she would have fallen over.

"No." I clung to my Mother.

"Brianna." She uttered. She was tired, already having dealt with this before leaving the house. And it didn't help that Grandpa only laughed instead of helping out.

"No!" I said louder, squeezing my tiny fists into her shoulders.

"Look. Everything will be fine. The day will fly in, trust me. And I'll be right here when you get off the bus later." Mom continued.

She gave me a kiss on the forehead and shook me off.

As she smoothed her skirt down, I stamped my foot in a huff. For me, this was the second most ultimate betrayal that had ever happened to me. My Mom was making me go to school. How dare she.

"I love you, girl. Be good and have a great day." Mom said before walking away. My gaze followed, feeling the faucet in my eyes turn on. I was prone to cry baby behaviour around this age.

Now that my Mom was gone, it was all game for the bitches.

"Awww, the little baby needs her Mommy." One of them cooed in her fake voice. "Didn't you know the pre-school bus picks up two hours later?"

"Yeah!" Another decided to join in, "And I bet that's not even your real Mommy."

"She is too!" I clenched my tiny fists at my side. This was half true. I was an adopted child, but to me, Roberta was the best Mother I could have ever asked for. And no one had the right to question that.

"No, she's not! Your real Mommy didn't want you 'cause you're ugly!"

"Yeah, look at your hair. It looks like a fur ball."

"And your clothes are obviously hand me downs."

I stamped my feet again. "That's it! I'm giving you the finger!" I flipped them off. I picked it up from Mom, from the many time's drivers pissed her off. When she'd warn me never to do that, I knew it had some sort of power to it.

But it did nothing. The girls just laughed even more. I had no defences; therefore, I was left helpless.

The bus pulled up, and I was last to get in. The girls warned almost everybody to watch out for the "girl with the weird hair".

I moved down the middle of the bus, my head moving from side to side, hoping to find a seat.

Everybody with a free seat either put their bags on the chairs or put their feet up. I wanted to snap, demanding that they let me sit. But the fear inside rendered me silent.

I was nearing the back, where the 3 girls sat. They smirked upon seeing my face, relishing in the fact I was on the verge of tears. All I wanted was to turn back, get off the bus and lock myself in my house.

But as if someone above heard my innermost thoughts, that's when I heard it.

"Do you need a seat?"

I looked towards the voice. And I froze. There she was, an absolute angel. She looked like a Disney Princess with her bright blonde hair and blue eyes.

I hesitated for a moment. But the bus began to move. So I sat down next to her.

"Hi," I said.

"Hey." Her eyes were observing me, looking me up and down. And I felt even more stunned. "You have funny hair."

"My Mommy says I have lovely hair," I replied in defence.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way. I just never seen hair like that." The girl replied.

My hair wasn't even bad. I just had a massive head of untamed brown curls. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then again, I had never seen anyone with hair like hers. She looked like she had gone to a salon beforehand. "Your hair looks golden."

"Thank you." She smiled. "I'm Blair. My favourite colour is yellow, and I wanna be a singer when I grow up. How about you?"

"I'm Brianna. My favourite colour is pink. And...I wanna be a politician someday."

"What's a pola...polatichon?" Blair asked.

"A politician." I corrected her. "I don't know what they do. They just shout a lot. And that's what I want to do."

Blair had no idea what I was talking about, but she laughed anyway. And that made my heart skip a beat.

I felt something pelt the back of my head. I grabbed it, looking at the small rolled up bit of my paper in my hand. It was wet. I had just been spitballed for the first time.

Blair looked over her shoulder, and I did the same. It was the three bitches from the bus stop. They weren't even hiding their giggles.

"Not nice." Blair stuck her tongue out at them. Then, turning back around in her seat, she put her hand on mine. "Don't worry about them. I'm your friend, Brianna."

"Really?" My eyes brightened.

"Of course!"

As much as that statement had made my heart soar, how it made me feel like there was nothing to be afraid of…

It was the biggest lie I heard that day.

As soon as I got off the bus at the end of the day, I waved to Blair, unaware that she would be sitting with the 3 bitches the next day.

And then it went on for years, being that ugly girl with weird hair. And it didn't help that I needed glasses later in life.

But I wasn't completely alone. So let me tell you about Jujubee.

2020

"Hey, asshole! I'm pulling in there!"

Jujubee was hanging out the driver side window, flicking the indicator aggressively.

"Juju, can you just...not do that?" I asked, my eyes glued to my phone as I checked how many people had seen my Instagram story. It was a picture of the two of us, showing off our outfits that had been gifted from Alexander McQueen.

"And let that asshole steal my spot? Absolutely not." Jujubee protested. She flipped the guy off, only to receive the same gesture back at her. She wasn't prone to behaving like this. I usually found it absolutely hilarious how loud she could be.

Now, you're probably wondering - two well-dressed ladies in their Alexander McQueen outfits should be seated in the back of a limo, sipping champagne.

I wasn't a fan of limos. They only drew attention.

And with Jujubee hurling dog abuse at the other drivers, I was sure the attention would be on us.

But we made it to the event without any trouble.

Jujubee was hilarious, intentionally and unintentionally. I learned that all the way back on my second day of school. When it was clear to me that I wouldn't be friends with anyone else, I ventured off on my own, exploring the playground and looking for bugs. But, instead, I found her sitting alone in the sandbox.

"Leave me alone. I'm trying to dig to the centre of the Earth." She had said, blowing her shiny black hair out of her face.

I knew she would only reach the bottom of the pit, so I laughed, and I helped her dig. We had been inseparable since.

We grew up together, all the way through elementary, high school and college. And through those years, we had one thing in common - we were the weird ones. The kids who everyone bullied.

Ugh, I hated that word; bullied. It made me feel pathetic and helpless. Jujubee and I, however? We were far from pathetic and helpless. After all, how would we even be where we were if that was the case?

OK, maybe I was pathetic and helpless growing up. No, I was. I had just accepted all the name-calling, the shoving, the damage. Jujubee, on the other hand, would fight against it all.

But back to the current situation. We were now sitting at a table with the other project workers. Everyone was having a great time, and the event hadn't even really begun yet. They passed jokes around, talked about trials and tribulations, and I laughed along.

But I may as well have been alone as I was stuck in my own thoughts. How it was even possible, we were all gathered here for this moment.

I looked at Jujubee, sitting next to me, and felt an overwhelming need to hug the shit out of her. If it weren't for her being so encouraging, then maybe this wouldn't have happened.

"What's up?" She caught me staring.

I lowered my head for a moment, breathing a laugh out through my nostrils. I didn't want to get sappy with her, even though she deserved my gratitude. My best friend, my ride-or-die bitch. Lifting my head again, I smirked. "Nothing. I'm just glad you're on this team." I raised my glass to her before sipping the bubbling champagne.

"Proud of you bitch." Jujubee reaching over and squeezed my free hand.

I was proud of me too. Because, despite all of the shit I dealt with in school, here I was, the manager and director of this whole operation.

All of the hard work paid off - years of trials and tribulations, so many arguments and disagreements. We finally did it. We found a gateway to another world, a parallel universe, a portal in the middle of the space just waiting to be explored.

Of course, people doubted me. They said things like, "Well, it is a dream, all right." How could anyone blame them?

But here we were.

The speaker, Michelle, called me up onto the stage to receive a certificate, all encased in a glass frame. I exchanged air kisses with her and graciously took the award. Jujubee cheered me on as I stood up there, letting people take pictures.

And then came the obligatory speech.

I couldn't lie; I hated public speaking. It was always something I struggled with. But, I never backed down from one. I just liked to keep them short and sweet.

"Long story short, I had dreams, and I worked towards them. So, here I am, an example of the walking embodiment of success. And I thank each and every one of you, ladies and gentlemen. Have a great night."

Short and sweet. The crowd applauded.

Yes, I was told in the past that I'm arrogant, but I disagreed. I'd say confident. And there was nothing wrong with confidence. After all, there has been a stigma around that word. Doesn't it come from a sense of insecurity, the need to tear successful people down because you're afraid to strive towards your goals?

I deserved to feel this successful, for all those times I was laughed at and ridiculed. I look down on all those assholes and let them know that I made it.

I posed for pictures as I held my award, knowing they would be everywhere the next day; in the papers, magazines, the Internet.

This wasn't the first award I had received. I had a shelf full back home, along with all of my past badges. They reminded me that, once upon a time, I was just any other office worker with her yellow badge. And now here I was, the director of the project with my black badge working closely with the government.

I got off the stage and moved back to my chair. Jujubee rolled her eyes, but her smile remained.

"Where's the after-party?" I asked as the audience shifted their attention from me.

Sometimes I never understood how she put up with me. "Don't worry. I got us covered."

She wasn't lying. A few hours later, we were in the apartment of some other rich somebody. Music was bouncing off the walls, the speakers apparently on full blast.

The main lights were out, replaced with multicoloured LEDs dancing around the place. It was as if we were in our own private club.

Jujubee and I were in the crowd dancing, but because I was absolutely wasted, I lost her many times.

No need to panic, however. Jujubee wasn't a drinker. So she'd find me. She always did.

I really did feel sorry that she had to deal with all of my shenanigans.

"Juju, where the fuck are you??" I roared, not that it would do much. Midsummer Madness by 88RISING was blaring now. Starting to stress out now.

I grabbed a champagne flute as a waiter walked by.

"Brianna, I love the dress." A woman leaned over and shouted in my ear. I had met her before at another event, a fashion reporter if I remembered correctly.

"Thanks. It's Versaci."

As I said earlier, it was fucking Alexander McQueen. I was faded.

Somehow I ended up in the bathroom, throwing up all the alcohol I had consumed into the toilet. After I finished, I washed my mouth out, looked at my reflection and said, "Baby, you're a star."

And somehow, I made it back downstairs. I was searching for Jujubee but found someone else instead. And it was fucking Ed Sheeran.

"I love your new song." I lied.

"Which one?"

"The new one." I smiled. "Hey, Ed. You wanna be the first person to go through the portal?" I wrapped an arm around him.

He looked absolutely taken aback. "Of fucking course. My manager will be in touch."

I really hoped he was joking. Why the fuck had I even suggested it?

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Jujubee. My nerves settled, and I leaned closer to her. "Let's go outside."

I had no recollection of making it out to the balcony. The only thing I remembered happening before then was rambling to many strangers about how much I adored Jujubee.

A few other party attendees were outside too. I wanted to tell them how I didn't deserve Jujubee and that she was an angel. But she quickly steered me away.

I looked out over the city, a happy smile on my face.

"Are you having fun, baby girl?" Jujubee asked, using her favourite pet name for me. She sparked up a cigarette. I wanted to ask her for one, having gone from chain smoker to social smoker in recent years. But I was too distracted by the view.

"Yeah. I can feel it, Juju." I replied, looking at my hands. It was almost like I could actually feel it. The euphoric feeling of success running in my veins. "Good things are coming."

"Oh, I feel it too." Jujubee blew out the smoke and followed my gaze. "You know what? Your Grandpa was a great guy. And I know that he's proud of you."

My smile dropped. And I was silent.

I preferred to avoid speaking about things like this. Emotions weren't something I liked to deal with - another difference between Jujubee and me.

Just the year prior, we both went to see Midsommar. During the scene where the main character is having a breakdown on the ground surrounded by the Hargan woman screaming along with her, Jujubee was captivated. She looked almost like she wanted to scream along with them. And as she squeezed my hand and leaned over to me, she said, "I need someone to do that with me." I replied with a quiet, "Can't relate."

I'm not insensitive. I just feared emotions for two reasons.

1. They could be weaponised against me. And as much as I tried not to let the online hate get to me, I knew that if it ever became personal, then it would hit difficult.

2. The most important reason of all; a childhood full of breakdowns and too many emotions.

Jujubee nudged me. "You wanna go?"

I didn't want to. But I said, "Yeah. I'm...so drunk right now," and turned away from the city view.

"Can I be that annoying whore and ask if I can stay at your place?" Jujubee asked, taking my hand.

She didn't even need a reason. "Yes, you can."

We waded our way through the crowd, made for the door and left. And before I knew it, we were back at my place, lying in my bed. I loaned her a t-shirt to sleep in. I wanted to sleep in my Alexander McQueen. But Jujubee wouldn't let me.

We both lay there, facing the ceiling. I could already feel the oncoming suffering. Usually, I loved moments like these, when time became fluid, when I didn't have to worry about how I had even gotten home.

But my head was pounding, and the loud ringing in my ears was the cause. If I was bad now, I'd be dead by morning.

I could feel Jujubee's eyes on me, and I looked back at her. She was smiling, her brown eyes glimmering. "Almost there, girl."

Despite the pain I was in, I smiled back. I knew this whole thing, the thingy, the portal; it wasn't just my dream. It was hers too.

Fuck, I was hammered.

"Almost there," was all I could manage to say.

Jujubee turned on her side and treated me to some cuddly spooning. "OK, go to sleep, loser."

It was straining on my neck, but I kept my head turned, letting my eyes linger for a moment longer. God, I fucking loved that bitch. Nothing was ever going to come between us, and that made me the happiest.

I turned over, my back relaxing against her torso. Then, before giving in to my exhaustion, I checked my phone. The bright light made me squint at first. And the alcohol in my system didn't help matters.

I checked how many people had seen my story now. The number was blurry. So I aimlessly swiped notifications away.

But I stopped at one message in particular.

Blair: Hey Brianna! Long time no speak. I just wanted to say I saw pictures from your thing tonight. Congrats, girl! Look, I know you're probably super busy, but I'd love to have a catch up with you sometime.

"..." My eyes were wide. Now that was a name I hadn't heard in a long time.

1995

"Do you see Cassiopeia yet?" Juju whined.

I was trying my hardest to find it in the telescope. But the stars were all in clutters; there were so many. "No. I think I see the big dipper, though."

"Really? Let me have a turn!" Juju begged.

I pulled away from the telescope, allowing Juju her turn. Usually, I would have refused, only letting her use the scope after finding what I was looking for.

I really hadn't found the big dipper, but Juju bought it. "Wooooow. That's so cool."

"I know, right?" I smirked.

The backdoor opened, and Grandpa came out in his winter jacket, pj's and his signature slippers. "How many have you girls found now?"

He was carrying two mugs of hot chocolate with whipped cream. I cheered excitedly because Grandpa's hot chocolate was the best, and I'd fight anyone who tried to tell me otherwise.

"We found the big dipper. But that's it." Juju replied, sounding very much let down.

"Don't lose hope," Grandpa gave us our hot chocolate, "some are harder to find than others. I bet there are a lot more constellations out there that haven't even been discovered yet."

I sipped the hot drink, and I could feel it already warming me up. I was so tempted to take my gloves off and let the mug warm them up. But we promised my Mom we would stay wrapped up. "Do you think we could discover one?"

Grandpa took a seat on one of the old deck chairs. "Brianna, you can do anything you set your mind to. Anything is possible."

"One day, I wanna get into a rocket ship and fly away," I said, looking up at the night sky, imagining the scene in my head.

"Hey, Mr Caldwell, are there other people like us? Just looking up at the sky?" Juju asked, taking a sip of her hot chocolate.

"That's an interesting question. I'd say yes, what with how nice the sky is tonight," Grandpa let his gaze trail up, the stars reflecting in his eyes, "But did you know, somewhere far, far away, there are two little girls who are exactly like you. They look the same, they talk the same and even have your names. And they are doing exactly what you're doing right now."

My brows knit in confusion, "what do you mean 'far far away?"

Grandpa looked down again, seeing how intrigued Juju and I was. "Let's just call it the other world. It's basically like our world, but...certain things are different. Like," he paused to think, "maybe cats bark and dogs meow. Or, maybe the sky is pink and not blue. Maybe you girls are actually older, and I'm the young one."

"Do horseys fly in the other world?" Juju asked with much optimism.

"Probably. I don't see why not." Grandpa shrugged.

I glanced up at the sky as if I would somehow just see it. Another world where life was somewhat better.

"Would my Mommy and Daddy have given me up in the other world?" I asked quietly.

Grandpa was silent. His lips were pursed, forming a tight line like there were words on the tip of his tongue that he knew he shouldn't say.

Juju hugged me from the side. I wanted to hug her back but didn't want to cry.

Her hold made me feel safe, so I offered her a half-smile.

Since my first day at school, when those cretins had tried to tell me Roberta wasn't my real Mom, it stuck with me. Yeah, I knew deep down those girls didn't know shit, and Roberta was the best Mother in the world, but I was only human.

As much as I loved my Mom, Grandpa and other family members, I just wanted to feel acceptance from my biological parents.

"Brianna, honey, whoever your family is in the other world, I'm sure they love you from the bottom of their hearts. Just like we do." Grandpa said. He extended his arms out, offering me a hug.

I didn't want it. But I knew I needed it.

That night, we didn't find any constellations. Not that it mattered. After my Grandpa went back inside, Juju and I were set on finding the other world instead.

And this interest went on for nearly a whole year.

It sounded dumb, but we would play games where we were our 'other world selves'. Juju lived in a house full of cats, and they were 'cutest cats in the whole country. So cute they won every pageant!'

And I lived in a huge mansion with my Mom, Grandpa, and my biological parents.

We collectively agreed that our other world selves were the prettiest girls in school, and we had tons of friends. We were so cool, we didn't even have to go to school.

Of course, this started a minor argument between us. Juju would always say, "how can we be the prettiest girls at school if we don't have to go to school??"

"Shut up, Juju! Anything is possible in the other world!"

"Yeah, but it doesn't make sense!"

All of it was so ridiculous. But we loved every minute of it.

I'll never forget the time we built a fort in the woods at the back of my house, and Juju stood under the archway and shouted. "I'm the queen of 'Other World'. Beware ye bastards who enter our domain!"

Then she got upset because she said a bad word and thought she had betrayed her parents.

A few minutes later, I fucked up.

"I, Brianna Caldwell, am the Queen of 'Other World'. I sit on this throne along with my best friend, Blair St Clair!"

Juju was even more upset now.

"Why is she your best friend?? I'm your best friend!" She began to cry.

"Jujubee, it's only pretend." I tried to reason with her.

"No, Brie-Brie. You're always talking about Blair! I know you would rather be best friends with her than me!"

"That's not true!"

"It is!" She wept. "She'll never be your friend, Brie-Brie. She doesn't even like you."

"Take that back!"

"No!"

My anger was bubbling beyond the boiling point. So I shoved her over. "Go away. Now!"

Juju ran off crying.

My teeth were grit, my fists clenched. For about 5 minutes, I stormed around the fort, screaming in anger and kicking the ground.

Mom was freaked out. She knew it was me screaming, so she came running. When she found me, she shouted at me for scaring the absolute fuck out of her.

This only pissed me off more. It took her 5 minutes to get me to chill out.

When I finally explained what happened, she told me it was OK and that we'd be friends again the next day.

It didn't help my mood, so she took me to the mall. It was a rare occasion for us to visit the place. We weren't the richest, what with Mom struggling to keep a job. She wasn't a lousy worker; someone else would just come along who was much more experienced. And without another parental figure to help out, it just meant not much money was being brought into the house.

But Mom decided we'd go to the toy store, and I'd find two dolls, one for me and one for Juju. I made sure they looked exactly like us. Well, considering the nice clothes and great hair, they were our other-selves.

And leaving the building, I was perched on Mom's shoulders, eating the biggest ice cream cone I had ever gotten, when I looked over at the jewellery shop. Two women were leaving the store, holding hands. They leaned in close to each other and kissed.

I just...stared as they smiled at each other, mesmerised by the adoration they so clearly shared.

"Mommy?"

"Yes, Brianna, baby?"

"Why are those two ladies kissing?"

Mom cast a quick glance to where I was looking. "Oh. OK, first of all, don't stare. It's rude. But yeah, they're just two ladies in love with each other. That's all."

I looked away, just as she told me to do. "They're in love? I thought only boys and girls could be in love."

"I guess they're still telling you that in school, huh?" Mom quipped. "Well, I'll tell you this, but keep it on the down-low 'cause I don't want no parents coming and knocking on my door saying you're putting ideas into their kids' heads." She laughed. "The truth is; boys can fall in love with boys, and girls can fall in love with girls. You fall in love with whoever your heart tells you to, Brianna."

I nodded. "Uh, huh. OK, I understand." But then, it hit me. "Fuck."

"Brianna." Mom warned. She knew I was prone to sometimes spurting a few cuss words. But she only had herself to blame.

"Sorry, Mommy." And as we left the mall, my brain couldn't stop thinking about what had popped into my head.

Maybe, just maybe, I was in love with Blair.

My mind was taking me back to years prior, still in my first year of elementary school. It was coming up to Valentine's Day, and we all had to make a card for someone in the class. Bit of a weird activity for a bunch of kids who were more concerned if they were getting bikes for Christmas or not.

And I slaved over my card, making it yellow instead of the traditional pink colour, and drawing daisies all over it.

The message read, "You really deserve this. You're welcome." I've always been a poetic genius.

And instead of giving it to any of the boys, I insisted it went to Blair.

I had vague memories of that day. I only remembered her confused face as I handed it over.

I never received a card in return.

Of course, the other kids picked on me for it. But Juju had my back.

"You're all just jealous 'cause Brie-Brie's card is unique!" I remember her shouting.

But of course, they weren't jealous. This concept was foreign to them - a girl gifting another girl with a Valentine's Day gift. But then again, they just didn't know any better.

#rpdr fanfiction #s10 #miz cracker #jujubee #blair st clair #blair x cracker #fluff #coming of age #hurt/comfort #lesbian au #gimme love #grinder #concrit welcome #tw panic attacks #tw mental health issues

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tak4hir0 · 4 years

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And back to the UK, it’s cold here! In brief, I admit I had a blast at Dreamforce this year! It was great to: 1) Showcase HIVE and the teams that I’m doing quite a bit of work with, at the developer keynote. Which had a whole chapter as part of the technology announcements for the year, which I was working with to get it ready with the product and evangelist teams before the event. One of which was Alba Rivas from the dreamOle team that has recently moved on to the Salesforce Evangelist team, it was so nice when I got a whatsapp from her early on in the prep for the keynote Although it really is great to see oneself on the big screen like this I wanted to showcase the team, so I managed to sneak in a little sign. I wonder if Wade thought for a second… oh dear another protester! 2) Laura Walker (who I also work with) opened the Admin keynote, high five-ing Parker Harris on to the stage! And Michael Kolodner, who by the way I had the pleasure to discover is such a gamer! We may be on to something about board games at Dreamforce… 3) Recording the day before Dreamforce a Pluralsight course with Don Robins, Agile for Salesforce coming up in couple months for the #SFPlayByPlay series. It’s a pre #Df19 wrap! Last batch of 2019 #SfPlayByPlay in the can: @Inescapinezka on Agile with #Salesforce and @jan_vdv demystifying #CPQ. Browse all in the PxP gallery https://t.co/xFIYkLxh5J & follow me on @Pluralsight to get notifications https://t.co/ANtDQdrMB9 pic.twitter.com/3uvYV5b5A7 — Don Robins (@donrobins) November 19, 2019 4) Having my crazy cards selling out at the DreamStore. And it’s OFFICIAL: #Dreamforce is going to be epic! My recently released #GAME https://t.co/Tpaf59M8ZY IS @ the #Dreamstore @ #DF19. For #agile teams to selfasses, improve & have fun! Thankyou to make this happen #Agile & #trailblazercommunity. #BNT adventures. I’m over the moon! pic.twitter.com/WAz6hrn1dL — Ines Garcia (@Inescapinezka) November 17, 2019 5) Also sharing some content about Release Readiness, Appexchange and digital nomads, Building applications in the Salesforce platform workshop and a Lightning roundtable. … enough bragging. But seriously it was awesome! Now, I thought to ping some product highlights and share knowledge on what’s coming: Firstly, it was a breath of fresh air during the main keynote to openly acknowledge that one uses more things than just Salesforce. (That statement includes AWS Trailhead modules available now and Amazon Connect as a strategic partnership). Salesforce Economy update is that it keeps growing and growing, so let’s bring people in! So we all can be ready to fill those opportunities with willing, capable and prepared professionals. The little device running Einstein Voice (I think this is Amazon under-the-hood and with connection to Service Cloud, you can build skills to power apps too) made it to the big stage as the announcement of the year, even managed to have a section in every single keynote. The @Salesforce and @AWScloud strategic alliance is expanding to include ways to achieve customer service, learn skills, and make Einstein Voice Builder compatible with @alexa99 and other voice assistants. See everything else announced at #DF19 https://t.co/8rixQcqbYT pic.twitter.com/JO7JQjkg3s — Dreamforce (@Dreamforce) November 25, 2019 Tableau was part of the main keynote, but in my opinion with a very poor showcase and demo. Throughout the conference I had many confused conversations on where does this sit, including from Salesforce Employees. So impatiently watching the space to find out more. More and more on Customer 360 Truth Which connects data from across sales, service, marketing, commerce etc. to create a single, universal Salesforce ID for each customer. Revamp of the Salesforce mobile app, and one of which in my mind must be related to the ‘Trailhead Go‘ a separate app to do modules on the go… ahem this is for questions tick-box not actually doing hands-on exercises. But it’s a starter! There was the announcement that Marketing Cloud will run on Microsoft Azure, so hopefully this will enable other things like: as customer you could find your own logs, be less clunky and have sandboxes? Those are my hopes but not quick ones to deliver. From Marketing Cloud side of things there was another good product release in my mind: the embedded forms within emails I think is pretty cool (maybe an outcome from previous acquisition, I think). Watch the dev keynote! but few quick notes: announcement of Evergreen (serverless functions and elastic compute), Lightning Full sandboxes within minutes!, Data policies and Masking across environments, local development (beta), Open sourcing Lightning base Components… BOOM! Permission set groups another layer for separation of concerns, I think we may need to do some migration from profiles to at least permission set at some point soon. (Conspiracy theory disclaimer: that page layouts will go away) With the announcement of Dynamic Forms for record pages, you can go as granular level of 1 field, that is not only display area but dynamic visibility on user and other value within the record. But is not all ‘happy clappy’, the True to the Core session was good too. It felt to me a bit too short as a big part was to explain the announcement of the IdeaExchange, which is basically a revamp where not all points count the same, so when voting for new features you would do it as ‘a product manager’ with 100 coins to distribute on and how things are important to you. Check it out it’s live already: https://ideas.salesforce.com/s/prioritization There was a really honest session on ‘open conversation of DX’ I leave here a snapshot on what the product team is aware they need to sort out: On top of all of this, I had some incredible conversations with people, some deep and even some non-Salesforce related (!), certainly quality over quantity. Which with Dreamforce madness this can easily be a challenge. So a big thank you for being part of this Dreamforce to remember! I certainly missed my peeps Chris & Mike throughout, I kept sending them silly stuff… sigh!

#Salesforce Weekly

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imitranslates · 7 years

Text

Fukigen na Mononokean Ch. 45

What a sweet chapter!! I hope everyone enjoys this one as much as I did. Please check out Crunchyroll release (on their site if you’re able!) when it comes out in a few weeks!

The newest chapter can be read on the official website: http://www.ganganonline.com/contents/mononoke/ (it’s the orange button labeled 最新話を読む)

Fukigen na Mononokean Chapter 45 – Victory Cry

Page 1

Abeno's jacket: Safety first! You wanna fight?

Mononokean is life!

Ashiya's jacket: Among heaven and earth, only the hairball is great.

(Save the weak, crush the strong.)

Page 2

Kid2: That dropkick was super sweet!

Kid1: I want to see it, too...

Oisuke: My sweet home!!

Abeno: Ashiya.

Page 3

Abeno: I'm going over there to exorcise Oisuke-dono.

Abeno: Distract those grade schoolers so that they don't follow me.

Ashiya: Roger.

(Abeno: Hairball, come with me.)

Ashiya: ......

[If this request had come from the Executive...]

[Abeno-san would have surely come here alone...]

Page 4+5

[At that time]

[If I hadn't been there to stop him]

[Yet again...]

[He would done something crazy all by himself.]

Page 6

Abeno: I am Abeno Haruitsuki, the master of the Mononokean.

Abeno: I ask to open a door to the Underworld.

Abeno: Oisuke-dono... I take it there was no damage?

Oisuke: Indeed!

Oisuke: Nothing's wrong! My home is perfectly sound!

Page 7

Oisuke: It's all because Ashiya-dono risked himself to protect it!

Oisuke: Right when it was about to be smashed, he saved it with that flying kick!

Abeno: (Even if that's true, that acrobatic rescue was totally unnecessary, you know.)

[If he messed up even a little...]

[That sandbox would have been the site of a disaster...]

Oisuke: Abeno-dono!

Oisuke: Please convey my gratitude to Ashiya-dono!

Abeno: I certainly will.

Page 8

(Kids: Woooah!)

Abeno: !

Kid1: Ashiya, you're awesome!

Kid2: Ashiya! Do it again!

(Ashiya: OK!)

Abeno: (I did tell him to keep them preoccupied so that I could exorcise Oisuke without them following, but...)

Page 9

Ashiya: Hoh!

Ashiya: A handstand!

Ashiya: Into a bridge!!

Ashiya: And a cartwheel!

Abeno: (He’s really effective. [They're glued to the spot.])

Ashiya: !

Abeno: I'm done... Let's go.

Ashiya: (Okay.) Well, we've finished out business here, so we're going head back.

Sorry for getting in the way of your watermelon splitting.

Page 10

Kid2: Why don't you split it with us?

Kid2: This watermelon is really tasty.

Kid1: If you split it, we'll give you half...

Ashiya: Let's participate, Abeno-san...!

Abeno: Isn't 15 too old to get pulled in by some grade schoolers?

Ashiya: (No, no!) Abeno-san, please take a good look at this watermelon!

Ashiya: The stripes are a healthy color and the zigzag pattern is like waves on the ocean!

Ashiya: The portion where the vine was attached is still green, proof that it was freshly harvested!

Ashiya: When you touch it, the edges of the stripes feel rough!

Page 11

Ashiya: And listen to this sound when you hit it!

Ashiya: There's no mistaking it! This is a delicious watermelon with a sugar content of at least 12%!

(Kids: Wooow!)

Abeno: (That salesman is really noisy... I wonder if the watermelon will explode..)

Kid1: My dad grew this watermelon!

Kid2: Let's split it and eat some already!

Ashiya: Abeno-san! Let's split the watermelon!

Kids: Abeno-san!

Abeno: (Watermelon aside...)

Abeno: (Even if we leave, it'll be a pain if those grade schoolers tag along.)

Abeno: (Today's work is over, so...)

Abeno: I'm going back. If you're going to split the watermelon, you can return on your own.

We'll part ways here.

Ashiya: Stop!! Please don't leave me behind!? Returning on my own is totally impossible...!! (Where are we even!?)

Page 12

[In the end...]

Kid1: Since Ashiya's a grown up, you need a handicap!

Kid2: Spin around 10 times!

Kids: 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! 8! 9!

Page 13

Kids: 10!

Ashiya: Now then!

Kid1: Go! Ashiya!

Kid2: Walk straight ahead to the target!

Ashiya: Straight ahead, like this...

Ashiya: No worries...

(Kids: Left!)

(Abeno: Left!)

Ashiya: Left...?

Page 14

Abeno: Are you done having your fun? Let's head back.

Ashiya: Next time, for sure...

(Kid1: Next up, it's my turn!)

Abeno: You can't beat that thing. (Give up.)

Ashiya: Just watch... I'll make mincemeat out of it...

(Abeno: If you make it mincemeat, all that's left will be mush, you know?)

(Ashiya: It'll be a fruit juice with 100% pulp and seeds.)

(Ashiya: Doesn't sound very good...)

Page 15

Abeno: ...Anyway, Oisuke-dono said to give you his thanks.

“This is because Ashiya risked himself to protect it.”

(Kid2: Left, left!)

(Kid1: Which way's left?)

Ashiya: I see...

Ashiya: I'm glad I protected it. (His home...)

Abeno: Regardless, you didn't need to jump around like that!

Ashiya: But if I didn't stop you, you would have tried to protect it yourself, right?

Ashiya: Wham!! Right?

Abeno: That thought never entered my head.

Abeno: !?

Page 16

Ashiya: That's a lie.

Ashiya: It was definitely in the corner of your mind.

Abeno: ......

Page 17

Ashiya: ...If you, once again,

Ashiya: Were injured before my eyes, I'd be horrified.

Ashiya: It's just a scratch on the cheek, but...

Ashiya: The base cause of it was you doing work alone, so that I wouldn't have to encounter the Executive.

In order for me not to realize it, you even didn't make a fuss...

Abeno: .......

Ashiya: But, this time

Ashiya: If a request comes from the Executive, I want you to call out for me.

Page 18

Ashiya: If you end up doing too much again, Abeno-san...

I'll desperately protect your lifeline, at least.

Ashiya: I mean...

Ashiya: You might not know this, but...

Ashiya: The truth is, I am...

Ashiya: A servant of the Mononokean!

Page 19

Abeno: ...Huh?

Ashiya: Since you're still inexperienced, you should ask for help no matter what kind of request there is.

Ashiya: Just ask, without holding back!

Page 20

Abeno: Hmm...

Abeno: So you were a servant of the Mononokean, Ashiya-kun?

Abeno: I never would have guessed.

Page 21

Ashiya: Right?

Ashiya: Fuzzy is also a servant.

Abeno: I knew that much.

Fuzzy: !

(Ashiya: So close!)

Kid1: Aahhh!

Kid1: Next is Abeno-san's turn!

Kid2: Abeno-saaan, come over here!

(Kids: He's such a cool delinquent!)

(Kids: Let's go, Abeno-san! You can do it without the handicap!)

Page 22

Kid1: Abeno-san!

Kid2: Abeno-san!

Kid1: Try to hit it like it's one of your enemies!

Kid2: It'll be just like when you swing around your steel pipe on your bike and break windows!

Abeno: (If I hurry up and split this thing, I can leave already!)

Ashiya: Abeno-saan!

Abeno: !

Ashiya: Leave the navigation to me!

Page 23

Executive: Itsuki.

Page 24

(I will likely make other requests to the Mononokean.)

(When that time comes...)

(You're free to make use of Ashiya Hanae.)

Executive: ...That is,

If that human doesn't run from us,

Executive: And remains as your employee... correct?

Page 25

Ashiya: There! There's a step up, so be careful!

Ashiya: Just go forward, like that...

Ashiya: Right there! Gooo!

Page 26

[Executive...]

[Your scheme failed, after all...]

Page 27

Ashiya: Nice work!

(Kid1: Just as expected from a delinquent!)

(Kid2: With one strike!)

Kid2: Even wearing a blindfold he went straight toward the watermelon, awesome!

Kid1: It was like he was walking forward regularly!

Ashiya: It was all thanks so my safe and secure navigation!

Page 28

Abeno: ......

(Kids: Wooooah!)

(Ashiya: This is a fantastic-looking watermelon!)

Abeno: (I could sense the hairball's presence... All I had to do was made a guess on where the watermelon was from there.

(But I'll keep quiet.)

Page 29

Ashiya: Thanks for waiting!

Mononokean: So the reason you were late coming back was because you were splitting watermelon, huh!

Page 30

Mononokean: Since you didn't come back quickly, I thought there had been a problem with work.

Ashiya: We turned down their invitation at first, but... It didn't look like they were going to give up.

Ashiya: “Won't it be trouble if we reject them and they tag along when we try to call the Mononokean?” we thought.

Abeno: Mononokean, there's an appointment for next week, but...

Ashiya: !

Ashiya: You're in your school uniform! Don't tell me, you have more work after this...?! (My uniform is in the wash...!)

Abeno: Today's work ended with one case.

Ashiya: Really?

Page 31

Abeno: .....

Abeno: Mononokean.

Mononokean: It's true. We're closed for the day~

Ashiya: (If the Mononokean says so, then I guess it's true.)

Abeno: Ashiya.

Ashiya: Yes?

Abeno: As for requests from the Executive,

Abeno: None have come right now.

Page 32

Abeno: Isn't that right?

Mononokean: There are currently 0 requests received from the Executive at this time.

Abeno: When a request from him does come,

Then...

Page 33

Abeno: Help me out. (...I guess.)

Ashiya: (He doesn't look like he wants any help...)

[But even so]

[This time, he'll tell me, without hiding it.]

Page 34

Ashiya: Just ask,

Ashiya: Without holding back.

Abeno: Mmm.

Page 35

Abeno: ...It's lukewarm.

Ashiya: It was sitting under the sun and on top of hot sand! Of course the watermelon would get hot like that. (It's been in the refrigerator since...)

Mononokean: Anyway, Itsuki?

Mononokean: Weren't you saying something about an appointment for next week before...

Abeno: (Yeah.) Next week, school will be restarting.

Abeno: I wanted to adjust the scheduling...

(Summer vacation is ending already, huh...)

Page 36

(It was a long summer...)

Mononokean: They took Fuzzy, saying a servant of the Mononokean was suspected of theft.

Justice: The Executive hates humans.

Executive: Who do you think I am? Ashiya Hanae.

(A ban from entering the Underworld.)

Legislator: Do you like gambling?

Page 37

[Influence...]

Ashiya: Mm... It's delicious.

#fukigen na mononokean #fukigen na mononokean translation #The Morose Mononokean #fukigen na mononokean chapter 45 #fukigen na mononokean 45 #manga translation

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aurelliocheek · 5 years

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Albion Online: The Technology of Albion

To work on a successful game is the dream of many Indies and beginners in the games industry. On the next four pages David Salz from Sandbox Interactive shares his dream with us.

The opportunity to make Albion Online was a dream coming true. At the same time, it was frightening. Even though I had many years of game development experience, some of it as a partner in my own company, I had never done an MMO before. In fact, I did not personally know anyone who had. What followed was a great learning experience (and I learned many things the hard way).

Getting started We started Albion Online with just two coders. Knowing that we knew nothing, we went through every book and article about online and multiplayer game development we could find. There is shockingly little, especially if you compare it to other fields like graphics programming. We also reached out to the few people in Germany who had MMO experience. Their very helpful input took the worst of our fears away, and we simply got started.

Middleware We use the Unity3D game engine to make Albion Online. Unity was up-and-coming when we started; it is powerful, flexible and inexpensive. Unity’s biggest strength, however, is the ability to publish on a huge number of platforms with very little additional effort. Even though we originally planned a PC-only game, we quickly realized that tablets and other mobile devices would be a crucial market in the future. Hence, Albion Online became a true cross-platform project. We started with Unity 3.5 almost 7 years ago, but we have made it a habit to always upgrade to the latest version of Unity as quickly as possible. These days upgrading the engine is a huge testing effort, and often new Unity bugs prevent us from using a particular new release. Finding a version that is stable enough for us has been getting more and more tricky the larger our game has become. On the other hand, there is no alternative since new OS versions (mostly OSX and mobile) often require new Unity versions.

As a network middleware, we use Photon. Photon comes with a server framework; the core is written in C++ for performance reasons, but the application code is C# – which is good because it means we can write the entire project in a single language and share code between server and client. C# is, in fact, an excellent choice for server development – very easy to use, fast, efficient and very stable thanks to garbage collection and exception handling.

Most of the game uses Photon’s reliable UDP protocol, and movement messages are sent as unreliable UDP messages. For the chat server and for inter-server-communication we use TCP. We use Photon on the lowest possible level, i.e.,, only the server framework and the network protocols. There is also a cloud-based hosting solution, a chat system, and even an MMO framework, but we decided to use none of that. Instead, we wrote as much as possible ourselves, and we decided to host the game on dedicated bare-metal servers.

Finally, we needed databases. For the game, the biggest concern was the ability to scale the game database for the potentially “infinite” game world size. We decided to give Apache Cassandra a try. Cassandra is a NoSQL database, i.e.,, it sacrifices the ability to do complex queries in favor of speed, high throughput, and the possibility to scale horizontally, i.e.,, by simply adding more servers.

Cassandra is essentially a distributed hash table. You can retrieve data only based on its hash key. There is no ‘SELECT … WHERE’ mechanism like in SQL. You can, however, build compound keys out of multiple columns and retrieve data based on partial keys. That way Cassandra forces you to design your tables around the queries you are going to make. This takes some time to learn, but the upside is that inefficient queries are almost impossible in Cassandra.

You can build a Cassandra cluster out of as many server instances (‘nodes’) as necessary. They will automatically split the hash space with some redundancy, so a couple of nodes may fail and the cluster will still stay operational. A caveat is that Cassandra is only ‘eventually consistent.’ Due to the distributed nature of the database cluster, it is possible to read ‘outdated’ data from the cluster, even though the ‘latest’ data will eventually be synchronized to all nodes. This can be fixed by either writing to or reading from a quorum of the database nodes, i.e.,, if you need consistent information, you can choose between slower reads or slower writes. Albion Online keeps most data in the game server’s memory while a player is logged in, so we choose slow reads but very fast writes. Player data is only read when the player logs in or changes the game server, but it is written every time something changes – just in case the game server crashes.

The biggest downside of NoSQL databases is the inability to do complex queries, i.e., JOIN and WHERE commands. For some purposes, e.g., the in-game marketplaces, queries are important, so we use a couple of Postgres SQL databases as well.

A collection of ‚tiles‘. The collision grids (black; collision is red) are hand-painted and used by server and client. The 3D collider (green wireframe) is used only by the client for mouse-picking and keeping the characters feet on the ground.

Doing a Unity game… without Unity It was clear to us from the beginning that we did not want to run Unity on the game servers. Unity is a closed-source environment we did not believe it was flexible, scalable and stable enough to support a game server for thousands of concurrent players. Also, we were simply not comfortable with having an uncontrollable ‘black box’ in such a key spot.

As a consequence of that, the core game systems would have to work without Unity, and we ended up coding our own technology even in areas where Unity offers good solutions. We have, for example, our own level file format, our own collision system, our own pathfinding, and our own game object management.

While that sounds like re-inventing the wheel, I would rather see it as cherry-picking. While it is somewhat crazy to write your own engine just because you can, it is equally crazy to use an engine feature just because it exists. You should rather ask yourself ‘Is this exactly the solution I need?’ and ‘How long would it take to write something myself that more precisely matches my needs?’ Owning and controlling key parts of the code has many advantages. Not only does our game server work without Unity, but we, in fact, also have a fully functional command-line version of the game client that runs without Unity! It has no graphics and no UI but is otherwise fully capable of logging in and playing the game. You can easily launch 50 to 100 of those on a single machine, and we often use it as a scriptable bot for stress tests.

Model – View – Controller A key design principle of Albion Online is a strict Model-View-Controller pattern. In an online game, the server must have absolute authority, meaning that all game world manipulations happen on the server and only the server can decide whether a player action is valid or not. We keep game data in memory and use databases as permanent storage; hence the server acts as the Model and the Controller here.

The Albion Online client is just a library (i.e., a DLL) that is able to communicate with the server. It will mirror the part of the data model that the player can “see” at a given point in time and offer a controller interface similar to that of the server. The client does validity checks and sometimes even prediction, but will ultimately send all valid requests to the server. The client library knows nothing about Unity. This allows us to have the command-line client mentioned earlier. The client code is maintained as a separate Visual Studio project that has no Unity dependencies, so it is easy to keep the separation in everyday work.

Unity comes into play as a pure View component. It will subscribe to various events the client library offers, create a view for every game object and update the view whenever the game object changes. All of the UI and input code is in Unity as well, but the real business logic is in the client library and not in Unity.

The collision information of all tiles is combined into a large collision grid for the entire map. It is also used for pathfinding.

Maps and Collision Unity is very good for map and level editing and extensible, too, so we had every intention of using it that way. On the other hand, the game server would need to be able to load the map files as well. Certainly, the server would not need the graphical assets, but it would need to know to location and properties of all interactive objects, the shape of the terrain, object collisions, etc. Collision was the next issue. Unity comes with a sophisticated physics system, so you could leave player-vs-environment collision completely to the physics module, or at least use ray casts against the physics geometry to determine where a player can go and where not. Today Unity even has built-in navigation meshes for pathfinding, that did not exist in 3.5 when we started. While that approach works great for an action-adventure, it seemed too complicated for the kind of MMORPG that we had in mind. We would need walkable and non-walkable terrain, line-of-sight checks for projectiles and pathfinding for monsters.

All of that should be super fast because it would have to executed or at least double-checked on the server for thousands of players and monsters. Physics-based collision does not give you that kind of performance. Another problem with physics engines is that they sometimes ‘tick out.’ We have all occasionally fallen through the ground or have been catapulted in the air in our favorite games just because we walked into an odd corner at an odd angle. For a level designer, such problems are very annoying to fix because it is often not obvious why the physics engine has an issue with a particular piece of geometry.

Considering all that it made sense to write our own collision and pathfinding system. In a drastic first step, we decided to regard the whole game as essentially 2D. The top-down perspective already forces the level design into a 2D mindset, and while the maps would not be totally flat, they would be flat enough to get away with this simplification. The world of Albion consists of ‘tiles.’ A tile can be a piece of ground or an object. Ground tiles are typically 10 by 10 meters (in respect to the size of the characters). Objects are everything that sits on top of the ground, from decoration to interactive objects like trees or buildings. All tiles have a hand-painted 2D collision in a 1×1 meter grid. The collision system allows a small number of geometrical primitives like triangles, circles and infinitely thin lines. Maps are built in Unity but exported into a proprietary file format. Every tile is a Unity prefab plus some meta information like size, collision, etc. A map is essentially just a huge list of tiles, often up to 30,000. Server and client load the same file. While the server only cares about the meta information, the client actually instantiates all the Unity prefabs. To our surprise, this form of loading is actually faster and gives us more control than using Unity scenes! We still use Unity scenes to store the maps for the level editor, but not in the game.

The Server Farm The server farm consists of several different server types and databases. We host everything on bare metal machines since we need strong CPU time and memory guarantees. Albion is a single, unique game world for all players. We use instancing only for player islands and certain types of dungeons, so we would not benefit much from the ability to scale to dynamically allocated virtual machines. Instead, we simply distribute the game world across a fixed number of physical machines.

Most of the heavy lifting is done by the Game Servers. Depending on your character’s location in the game world your client will connect to a different Game Server. As you move through the world, you may have to connect to a different game server. Your client will also maintain a connection to the Chat and Login Server. The Login Server handles all account operations like login, logout, character creation, etc. and will tell the client which Game Server to connect to.

The World server is the single authority for all game features that work across Game Servers, for instance, parties, guilds, guild vs. guild battles, etc. The Backoffice server controls farm startup, shutdown and provides an API to “talk” to the entire farm.

The Game Server Our game world consists of zones (“clusters”) that are roughly 1 x 1 km in size. There are currently around 600 of these. When you change zones, your client may have to connect to a different game server, and you will see a short loading screen on the client. The game logic of a cluster is handled by a single thread. Making this multi-threaded would be very error-prone and not necessarily more efficient since there are numerous complicated interactions between game objects which would require locking. Instead, all incoming player commands are put into a synchronized event queue and processed in order of arrival. Any work that can be offloaded – like database operations, pathfinding or logging – are handed to separate thread pools that complete their respective tasks asynchronously and put the result back into the event queue.

A second mechanism we use extensively is scheduled events (or simply put: timers). There is no real game loop in Albion Online, meaning that game objects have no Update() functions that are called every so often. Instead, objects will create timers whenever they need to. Monsters will create a recurring AI update timer as soon as a player gets near but delete the timer again when the player is gone.

Interest Management Interest Management is the ability to efficiently determine which game object can “see” which other objects at a given point in time. This is important for multiple reasons.

First of all, we want to minimize the network traffic for each client by sending the client only updates of objects it can actually see right now. Second, players do cheat. Any information that is sent to the client can and will be extracted by cheaters. That means we absolutely need to restrict client knowledge to objects that are on the screen or at least very close to it. The whole mechanism is also useful for many other purposes; for instance, monsters are activated when a player comes near and deactivated when the player leaves.

All this needs to be as efficient as possible. Let’s illustrate this with some numbers: A single (1 x 1 km) cluster may contain more than 300 players, 500 monsters and more than 10.000 other interactive objects (most of which are trees, because you can cut down every single tree in Albion Online).

We achieve the efficiency by putting all objects into a grid-based hash. Each grid cell is roughly 10 x 10 meters and contains a list of objects inside. Very large objects may be in multiple cells at once, but that is rare. The object itself is responsible for updating the hash if it moves. The grid cells fire events when objects are added or removed, so subscribing to these events already gives you a very efficient way of monitoring an area.

Each player is surrounded by something we call an Interest Area. It consists of two grid-aligned rectangles. When an object enters the inner, smaller rectangle, the player will start “seeing” the object, i.e., the server will send the client an initial “new object” message (“look, a monster!”) and subscribe to the various event the object itself offers. Whenever the object does something interesting (e.g. the monster attacks someone) it will fire an event, that event will be forwarded to the Interest Area of the nearby player, and the Interest Area will forward the event to the client.

An object will be watched until it leaves the slightly larger blue area. When that happens, the client will receive an “object gone” message and stop receiving updates. The blue area is larger in order to keep the visible object set more stable over time.

Conclusion I hope I was able to shed light on some of the more interesting technical aspects of Albion Online. It has been quite a journey, and we keep learning new things all the time. If you have questions, feel free to contact me!

Example of an object life cycle Here is a short example of an object life cycle. The server knows all objects (players,mobs,trees etc.) and their properties. The Interest Management system checks which client can see which objects. Whenever an object becomes visible (or invisible) to a client, an enter (or leave) message is sent to the client which will create a local copy of the object (or destroy it again). The server will also send update messages for all visible objects should their properties change.

Unity sits on top of the client as a pure view component. For every object created by the client, it will create an object view in the form of a Unity GameObject. The view will subscribe to any changes to the original object and will update graphics, sound and animation accordingly. The view takes input, i.e., interprets Mouse Clicks etc. into game commands. Commands are forwarded to the client game object, which checks the command for plausibility, and ultimately forwarded to the server which executes the command. Should game objects change as a result of the action, the server will send update messages as described above.

David Salz CTO, Sandbox Interactive

David Salz has been working as a software engineer in the games industry for 18 years. He is CTO and one of the founders of Sandbox Interactive. Before he entered the world of MMORPG gaming, David co-founded another company; his previous studio Bitfield produced several games for PC and Nintendo DS.

The post Albion Online: The Technology of Albion appeared first on Making Games.

Albion Online: The Technology of Albion published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

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roypstickney · 6 years

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50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

It’s Day 2 of Product Marketing Month. Today’s post is all about accelerating your marketing teams productivity with some creative new SaaS product adoption ideas. — Unbounce co-founder Oli Gardner

You don’t need a big budget or a six-week-long strategic planning session to get started with product marketing. Sure, you’ll need to do this eventually, but it shouldn’t put on hold your product adoption and awareness tasks. Educating customers and prospects about the power and utility of what you’ve worked so hard to build is easier than you think, and today I’ll show you exactly how we think about SaaS product adoption and awareness at Unbounce.

Back in 2012 we launched The Landing Page Conversion Course (LPCC for short), and as part of the rollout, I sat down and rattled off 25 quick and easy things we could do to create awareness. It took me less than ten minutes. I then grabbed Cody and Dan, and headed to a local bar to continue the session. Between the three of us, we notched it up to sixty before our first pint was done.

Getting scrappy is a great way to mobilize your team. These impromptu brainstorms not only created over 50 ideas we could implement really quickly, but it uncovered some that would become part of a larger strategic vision. Also, one of our dogs is called Scrappy, and he’s very cute.

Last week I sat down and repeated this exercise for the new products Unbounce: popups and sticky bars. Even though my focus was our own products (you can check them out via the 3 orange buttons in the nav ^^^), the majority of this list can be applied to any business, SaaS in particular.

You can create your own list like this too

I’d encourage you to repeat this exercise, starting by yourself, and then with some team members. Encourage them to come up with crazy and ridiculous ideas, as this will help expand your minds into ideas you’d typically consider off limits. After all, setting up a stall outside a conference (not your own), handing out bacon to tired hungover attendees as they arrive in the morning, might seem bizarre, but I guarantee you’ll be the favorite sponsor of the event.

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

With the collective wisdom of all of you reading this, we should easily be able to come up with 50 or 100 more ideas, so please drop them in the comments below and if they’re awesome I’ll add them to the master list with your name/company/product listed beside them.

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

.pmm-collapse{ cursor: pointer !important; display: block !important; background: #DCECF2 !important; padding:10px !important; font-weight:bold !important; font-size:18px !important; } .pmm-collapse-section .pmm-collapse + input{ display: none !important; /* hide the checkboxes */ } .pmm-collapse-section .pmm-collapse + input + div, .pmm-collapse-section .pmm-collapse + input + p + div{ display:none !important; padding:0 20px !important; } .pmm-collapse-section .pmm-collapse + input:checked + div, .pmm-collapse-section .pmm-collapse + input:checked + p + div{ display:block !important; }

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

Take a first pass at it yourself, then run a brainstorm with a shared Google doc. Take a different approach from a conventional brainstorm (where you plaster a wall with sticky notes). Instead, have everyone bring their laptop to the session. Have the team verbalize their ideas, and then enter them into the shared doc. It’ll make the process much faster.

2. Experiential content

The primary technique for content marketing is to provide educational content that helps people become better at their job – in the hopes that they will eventually end up buying your product. This is great, except for when they don’t know what your product is or why they should care.

To enhance the impact of your content, try showcasing it directly in your content. This won’t apply to every business, but if you offer any kind of website tech you can try it. If you do it right, you can create an experience that is better than the content alone.

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

If your software involves building something, a great way to help with onboarding and adoption is to drive first-time evaluators into a self-guided experience within a template. That way you can show them exactly how to use the product, inside the product! #inception

Here’s the “Builder Basics” template we created for this purpose. You can use it to get the full builder experience in less than 10 minutes or less, which is perfect for showcasing initial value and improving your Time to Value (TTV) metric.

This concept allows people to try your tool without needing to already have an idea they want to build and launch. You can also use it to specifically guide people to using the features you’ve identified as having the ability to create those all-important ah ha moments.

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

This is something we’ve wanted to do at Unbounce for years, and it finally became a reality in December. Essentially it’s a live session inside the Unbounce builder so people can get a hands-on experience without signing up.

With an interactive sandbox experience like this, the only barrier to entry is the complexity of the product or the clarity of how you communicate its use. And because we’ll be linking to ours from tens of different campaigns and contexts, we’re using entrance popups to speak directly to the message and source that led people to the demo, as well as introduce how the demo works.

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

A delightful and unexpected postcard can be a lovely touch, and if people have signed up for your product or products, you’ll most likely have their mailing address. It’s important to remember that your product marketing should be focused on your customers as much as those who are prospects. Your goal here for a single product is getting dormant accounts to adopt the product. For multiple products your goal is awareness and adoption or ones that people haven’t used yet.

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

Something else we’ve learned is that, beyond email onboarding, those handy product tours in app can be a great way of guiding someone through new additions to a SaaS product (or otherwise). You can try out something like Appcues to add a guided tour when you go from one product to two to ensure 1) people notice something’s new, and 2) they can discover its features in a quick, interactive way.

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

Largely we’ve talked about awareness in this post, but product marketing needs to go beyond this, too. It’s all about who can successfully use your product, fulfilling its initial promise of value. As legendary onboarding expert Samuel Hulick advises, you need to determine all the ah-ha moments leading up to where customers find value. I.e. in a journey, what exact tasks do people need to complete before they’ll see even the smallest amount of value you advertised?

As an example, for Unbounce popups and sticky bars, we identified that for evaluators to be successful in their trial using these, they must a) build b) publish c) add the line of javascript to their site d) collect 10+ conversions. (Ten or more helps us ensure they aren’t 1-2 from simply testing the product themselves).

It’s key once you outline your product’s ah ha moments that whatever they are, they’re trackable from inside your product. This ensures you can truly measure adoption and understand where people get stuck.

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

Taking Sam’s advice above, when we identified our ah-ha moments to product adoption, we started tracking them, made our dashboards, and then began creating educational content designed to help people over tricky steps. You can do the same for your products, too. Either via emails, or something like a skip ahead guide for product setup, similar to the one we made:

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

Get everyone on the marketing and customer success/support team to write one letter per day for 30 days. Cap the time at 15 minutes per letter. If possible take a look at how they use your product: “I loved your landing page for the blah blah” etc. (check with your boss or legal as to whether it’s okay to mention their work – in my experience as long as you’re not making it public it’s very cool).

Here’s the product marketing kicker: don’t sell or mention the product in the letter – keep it personal and thankful – but follow your signature with a fun and made up job title that mentions the new product or feature.

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

Ask your entire company to change their email signature to promote your new products. This can gain some exposure to different segments of potential customers. For example, your developers run in different circles than marketing, so their email conversations might connect with a different functional buyer persona. This also has the benefit of mobilizing the whole company with the same message, which is beneficial in its own right. Here’s an example email that our events manager sent to the company to help increase awareness for an event we were hosting at Hubspot’s INBOUND conference.

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

We like to have fun with our Out Of Office email autoresponders at Unbounce. Something funny or different can be a delightful way to respond to your customers and prospects when there might be a delay in responding. From a product marketing perspective, you can use this opportunity to talk about your new products or features. Try emailing me at [email protected] to see my current OOO autoresponder.

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

Try running a 5-second test using UsabilityHub.com to see what percentage of people can determine what your product(s) is in five seconds. Not only will you get a sense of how many can figure it out quickly, but you’ll get insights about how people might be misinterpreting your value prop. To turn this experiment into a product marketing effort, you can recruit free test participants via social media or an email list, effectively getting your product’s UVP in front of people.

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

If you look at the top of this page and scroll, you’ll see how the navigation bar sticks to the top (and gets slimmer to maximize the viewport). Our web developer made this. You can use a sticky bar to do something similar. If you click here, you’ll see a sticky bar with the same content appear, and because it was created in the Unbounce builder, a developer would never have been needed.

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

Add a link to your Twitter bio that leads to a product landing page. Double down by asking your employees/coworkers to change their Twitter header image for a period of time. You can’t add links in the main body of the bio, but you can add one below.

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

With a “Did you know that we have this product/feature?” to gauge awareness and create it at the same time. Have Yes/No/Tell me more options, with a link out to a landing page or product page if they say “Tell me more” or “No”. The product marketing gold in this one is that if they say “No”, you’ve made them aware of the product by simple virtue of asking the question. BOOM.

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Offer early access to your product (or a free account) to influencers in your industry. If they get value from using it, ask for some social sharing love, and ask them for a testimonial you can use as social proof on upcoming campaigns and your website. We recently released an amazing Landing Page Analyzer and asked Rand Fishkin if he’d try it out and provide a testimonial. Here’s what he sent back to me:

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

As I mentioned above, we called our new products by an umbrella term “Convertables”, including in the Unbounce app sidebar. We’ve now removed that and replaced with “Popups & Sticky Bars”. Sometimes you gotta get out of your own way, and call a spade a flippin’ spade.

Note that this was a fairly simple interface change, but there is still a massive amount of code that our engineering team had built based on the previous hierarchy. That will remain for now as we run these experiments, but it was a substantial barrier in getting buy-in to make these changes.

Overall, if you’re not being 100% clear about the context of use in the naming of your products, don’t stick with a name because you came up with it, be prepared to pivot for the sake of both awareness and adoption.

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

Reach out to your favourite podcasts to get on them as a guest. It helps if you have an influencer on your team. Typically, most interviewers will give you at least a small window to give your product a shout out.

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

Position yourself as an expert (I’d say thought leader but that term is kinda gross), by hosting or giving big-time participation to a Twitter chat session. If one exists related to what you do, join in, and offer to co-host or just help out. If there isn’t one, just f#**** make one. Start something. It’s not that hard. If it fails, so what?! Try things. Try things all the time. You’ll become a better marketer if you try.

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

Another gem from Nicole. Clarity is the most important part of your product’s value proposition, and as you will find out if you follow my advice with a 5-second test, not everyone gets it. I can’t imagine a more fun way to get your team describing what you do. Have them all mime it, then make a video and share it with the world. I guarantee a great time, and you’ll probably also have a team more aligned on your value prop – and perhaps some ideas for a better headline.

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.)

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

This is something we tried at CTA Conf in 2017 and it was awesome. In the “Product” tent, we had a bunch of workstations set up with gamified tasks which exposed the best product features. Two of the best were:

Drag & Drop Match For this challenge, we had two screens: one showing a completed landing page and the other where the Unbounce app was open and you had to replicate the completed page from jumbled components. You had to match the two pages by dragging elements, changing widths, colors and page sections.

Lock Box There was a locked box with sweet sweet swag inside, and to get the combination, you had to trigger a popup or sticky bar using all of the available triggering settings: click, entrance, exit, scroll down, scroll up, and timed delay. Each one had a number on it that made up the combination for the lock.

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

We also had some quiz questions that people could answer to get more tokens. It’s a wonderful way of marketing your products while also giving people some cool swag to remind them of you often. Your swag does need to be legit, otherwise people won’t really care enough to participate.

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

This is really simple and obvious, yet hardly anyone does it. Take the content you write for your blog and repurpose it in as many other formats and places as possible. For Medium write a more personal and transparent version, for LinkedIn create a shorter version and link back to the main article. Stick some slides containing visual highlights on Slideshare.

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

Have you talking to the camera and/or showing the coolest features of the product – and tailor them for specific search terms. For instance, we have a feature called Dynamic Text Replacement, that allows you to pass keywords from your AdWords campaigns to your landing page, increasing the relevance and often your Quality Score too. So for that we’d want to create a video called “How to use Dynamic Text Replacement to increase AdWords Quality Score”, and another called “How to use Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) to increase AdWords Quality Score”, as that’s an industry term for the same thing. And always have a CTA at the end of the video, driving people to a landing page.

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

If you have any content or tools that are in Google Sheets you can add a Google Analytics event pixel to know how many times it’s opened and which tabs are being viewed. This could help you understand what’s drawing people’s attention.

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

If you put on events (meetups or a conference), bring out your inner child and write & sketch cute product references on the sidewalks around the event location. Pro tip: the curb beside a crosswalk traffic light is the best spot as people have to stand and wait. It really works, after all, the “Look Right” paint that we’re all use to seeing was created because British wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill was visiting New York City and got smoked by a cab because he was looking the wrong way (cars drive on the left in the UK).

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

If you segment your customer list by those who have adopted your product, a simple thank you card is a lovely surprise. Make sure you include a link to a landing page to ask them for feedback or a testimonial. You should always be sourcing fresh commentary to add to your marketing collateral. A bonus for this approach could be that you might get some love on social media which helps spread the word through your customer’s networks.

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

On mother’s day record videos of your coworkers’ moms describing what your product does. Gold, Jerry, gold. Dads for father’s day. A robot text-to-speech audio generator for cyber Monday. Spread that golden poop on social.

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

Look at Google Analytics for your top 20 highest traffic blog posts, then comb through them for opportunities to add a contextual explicit ask of the reader. Such as: “You can create a blah blah, like that blah blah in the photo, by using blah blah, click here to see it in action.” Pro tip: try to put this in the first two paragraphs, as older blog posts, even with high traffic, can often be bounce traps where people run at the slightest hint of a bygone expiry date.

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

Following on from the last one, if you show an old date, many people will leave. Remove it, and some people spend their time wondering when it was published. It’s a constant dilemma for marketing teams.

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

Note that both of those metrics can be a bit shady if it’s the only page they visit on your site, as GA can only produce a real number if you visit more than one page. But you might spot something. If you DO find that people spend more time on the “no date” version, you can focus on getting more product mentions on those posts.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!”

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

Grab 20 people from your office and go do a dance outside the local art gallery. Choose some awesome 80s music and wear company t-shirts underneath a plain white/white/green one. Rip ‘em off and dance like tomorrow is a great day for signups.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

Captions can really increase the number of times your video is watched as many people can’t or don’t want to turn up the volume. Facebook’s Power Editor can automatically caption your videos. Give it a try, and if it’s not an accurate enough translation you can still do it manually.

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

If you didn’t get a chance to read the first post in Product Marketing Month, you might not know that the blog design you’re looking at was a very rapid overhaul for this category only. It took one of our developers a days work to set up a different WordPress template that is way more product focused.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

Start by doing a Google image search for your brand, company, products, founders, and see what shows up. I guarantee you’ll see a bunch of old logos and old product screenshots, not to mention some old hair (on the founders) :D Find those images and update them.

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

Wistia has shown that the default image on your videos is critical to optimizing for more plays. If your product marketing involves videos, then you need people to press play or what’s the point? This post has some great ideas.

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

This doesn’t have to be your core product. It can be anything that you’re releasing. We launched the Landing Page Analyzer there and managed to get to the #2 spot for the day, earning us a place in the PH newsletter.

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

Similar to how some ecommerce stores have a small notification appear when “Ashley from Minnesota just bought the Hawaiian Luau Shirt in Blue”, you too can share feedback from your customers and funnel this positive feedback directly onto your site via sticky bars designed to look like small push-style notifications.

In SaaS, for example, you can use a Hotjar poll to collect 2-month onboarding feedback, and then use sticky bars to funnel a the positive feedback onto your site using the on-scroll trigger. This can help address purchase anxiety by helping current prospects see who’s already starting trials and providing terrific feedback about their onboarding experience.

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

If you’ve got proper app security, it’s likely that your customers are automatically logged out after a given period, and will often see the login screen. This is a perfect opportunity to showcase your new products or even old ones that need a bit of love. This was a big learning for us, as we were only starting to use a portion of it (but look at all that space!!).

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Something along the lines of “Did you know that you can also create website popups and sticky bars with Unbounce?” We haven’t done this yet, but the idea came from the product team during a brainstorm.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

If you have a login link on your website (don’t we all?), check Google Analytics to see how many people are clicking on it. It’s very common behaviour for people to come to your homepage every time they want to log in, which in and of itself is critical info as you should be filtering it from your website traffic.

Like the in-app “Create” button, this is a brilliant way to present an interstitial popup to tell returning customers about your latest and greatest, with a simple button to continue on their way.

Phewf! That was a lot of tips. I hope they help you get more people seeing and using your products. Let’s open this puppy up! Share your own tips below and if they rock, I’ll add ’em to the post (with attribution).

— Cheers Oli Gardner

0 notes

kennethmontiveros · 6 years

Text

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

You can create your own list like this too

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

2. Experiential content

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.)

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!”

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

— Cheers Oli Gardner

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness published first on http://nickpontemktg.blogspot.com/

0 notes

josephkchoi · 6 years

Text

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

You can create your own list like this too

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

2. Experiential content

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.)

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!”

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

— Cheers Oli Gardner

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness published first on https://nickpontemrktg.wordpress.com/

0 notes

maxslogic25 · 6 years

Text

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

You can create your own list like this too

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

2. Experiential content

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.)

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!”

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

— Cheers Oli Gardner

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/product-marketing/saas-product-adoption-and-awareness-tips/

0 notes

zacdhaenkeau · 6 years

Text

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

You can create your own list like this too

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

2. Experiential content

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.)

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!”

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

— Cheers Oli Gardner

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/product-marketing/saas-product-adoption-and-awareness-tips/

0 notes

racheltgibsau · 6 years

Text

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

You can create your own list like this too

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

2. Experiential content

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.)

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!”

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

— Cheers Oli Gardner

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8217493 http://unbounce.com/product-marketing/saas-product-adoption-and-awareness-tips/

0 notes

littlemarketingproject · 6 years

Text

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness

You can create your own list like this too

Help us out by sharing your best ideas

Below are 50 ideas you can get started on today, broken into two parts, SaaS product adoption, and SaaS product awareness.

Part One: SaaS Product Adoption Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

1. Write your own “50-ways to promote our product” document

2. Experiential content

For example click here to see a sticky bar appear at the top of the page.

I just demoed our sticky bar product by asking for your participation.

The on-click trigger is one of many options available in Unbounce, including scroll down, scroll up, entrance, exit, and timed delay.

Brainstorm ways that you might be able to show your product in the context of your content.

3. Get meta with self-guiding templates

4. Try-before-you-buy demos

You can check out the try-before-you-buy demo here.

Entry popups are a brilliant way of scaling this idea as we can use referrer or URL or cookie targeting to show the right message to the right people.

5. Give early access to preferred customers

We gave some of the top brands that use Unbounce beta access to the popups release, which was a great way to source a high-profile testimonial, like this one from Campaign Monitor.

6. Create multiple product demo formats

Not everyone likes to consume content the same way. To combat this, on our demo page we offer three lengths of video: 2 mins, 10 mins, 30 mins, and live 1-on-1 sessions.

7. Send postcards to all customers not currently using your new product

8. Try a guided product tour within the app for new additions

9. Ensure you know every step involved in product adoption (and track them all)

10. Create onboarding materials mapped to your identified ah-ha moments

The resource above was delivered to those who started a trial within their onboarding emails. They could skip through the progress bar of ah-ha moments or must-do tasks to see value quickly.

Part Two: SaaS Product Awareness Tips

Click on the ideas to show the full description and instructions.

11. Send a handwritten letter to a customer every day for a month

For example: Oli Gardner, Chief Unbounce Sticky-Bar-with-Geo-Targeting Champion

I just mentioned the new product, and one of its features. In a delightful manner.

Bonus points if you create some content (like a custom landing page) that ranks for the keywords in that job title (and has your face on it).

Side benefit bonus: your coworkers get to rewrite their own job title every day for a month.

12. Company-wide email signatures

(Click for full-size image)

13. OOO Autoresponder

14. Test the clarity of your homepage value proposition

15. Add a sticky bar to your blog

Note: I made it appear at the bottom because if it appeared at the top you wouldn’t really see it because it’s so similar to the header.

16. Twitter bio link

17. Poll customers in your app/website/blog

18. Influencer testimonial outreach

Brilliant.

19. Remove confusing terminology: erasing the umbrella term from the app

20. Listen to some product marketing podcasts

Here are a few to get you going:

Product Marketing 101 by Uberflip

The Product Marketing Podcast by Josh Duncan

Former Apple Sr. Director of Product Marketing Michael Gartenberg

How we do Product Marketing at Trello with Jessica Webb

Product Marketing is the New Content Marketing by Unbounce

21. Become a guest on podcasts

22. Host or guest on a Twitter chat

23. Skywriter

You heard me. Get a plane flying over your city writing a romantic red script-style message in the sky. This tip comes courtesy of my wife Nicole, cos she’s hilarious.

24. Record videos of you miming what the product is and does

25. Sponsor conferences and show product videos during the breaks

Wistia does a great job of this (after all they are a professional video hosting company with amazing viewer analytics, HD video delivery, and marketing tools to help understand your visitors.) << See how I did some product marketing for them there? At many conferences, you’ll see some fun and useful videos in every break where they share video production tips and some light hearted comic relief.

26. Give away conference swag tokens when people try the product

So good.

27. Give away an extra conference swag token when people correctly answer key questions about the product

28. Repurpose all product marketing content on personal and business Medium, LinkedIn

29. Target important search keywords/phrases with simple product feature videos

30. Add a p.s. mention to all of your drip campaigns

If you have any email drip campaigns running, add a p.s. at the bottom of each email with a mention of your new product. As always, send it to a dedicated landing page if you can.

31. Create Twitter header images with unique shortlinks to a LP to gather attribution

Update your Twitter profile header image, and include a text bit.ly link (or similar). This will let you track its impact. You can see mine here.

32. Add GA event code/pixels to your digital collateral materials

Here’s how to do it. Choose (and protect) a cell somewhere in your sheet(s), and paste this code into it:

=image(googleanalytics(“UA-xxxxxxxx-1″,”Doc Name”,”Sheet Name”))

Obviously replace the xxxxxxxx with your GA account ID, and the doc and sheet names.

33. Link to product demos if you have a “branded free plan”

When customers are on our free plan, there is a small “Built with Unbounce” strip at the bottom of the page. Link this to your best product demo.

34. Update your blog bio to include a product mention

Here’s what mine looks like currently. It talks directly about Product Marketing Month, and this now appears at the end of the 300 blog posts I’ve written!

35. Sidewalk chalk around conference location

36. Send postcards to customers who are using your new product, to say thanks

37. The seasonal value prop challenge

38. Add explicit product asks/mentions to your blog

39. Remove the publish date on your top 10 blog posts with one line of CSS

No harm in experimentation though, so throw in a single line of CSS to set the ID or class of the meta info (date etc.) to hidden. {.blogMetaEtc: display:none !important;} will most likely work.

Replace .blogMetaEtc with the actual class or ID. Then after a week/month (depending on traffic levels), look in GA to see if the bounce rate or time on page is different.

40. Duh, ask your team to Tweet about the product. But do it right.

Mind blown, amiright?! Might seem basic, but how often does your team Tweet about new products or product features, or customer case studies etc.

Probably very rarely.

So just ask them! But don’t waste people’s time with a long-winded and generic, “Can you Tweet this?” email.

That shit drives me bonkers, it’s total amateur hour.

Send them a three-line email that says, “Hey team, it would really help if you could give our new product launch/feature some love on social.

Here’s a Click-to-Tweet ready to go, and here’s one for LinkedIn.” etc. etc. for the social channels that matter for you.

Include a p.s. “p.s. I would like to bug you to help like this once per month, so expect emails with that frequency. Thank you!” << letting them know it’s a regular thing will A) make you do it regularly, which you should be, and B) stop you from having to grovel every time you send an email like that.

You can even have a consistent “Product Marketing Tweet Request #23” in the subject line. Super clear, super simple, super respectful of people’s time.

41. Do a flash mob. Seriously.

42. Caption 10 of your videos on Facebook

43. Do a blog takeover. Like this one.

44. Update any blog/website images that don’t reflect the latest version of the product

45. Audit and optimize your default video thumbnails

46. Launch new products/tools on ProductHunt.com

47. Collect new customer feedback and share it directly on your site via a sticky bar notification

48. Use your login/logout screen wisely

49. Trigger product release interstitials from your most-used in app buttons

In Unbounce, one of the buttons you push most often is to “create”. People are very used to hitting this button, making it the perfect place to add an interstitial notification.

An interstitial is just a fancy way of saying a gateway experience that you pass through.

Personally, I think it’s genius.

50. Trigger product release interstitials from your website login link

— Cheers Oli Gardner

50 Creative Ideas Your Marketing Team Can Use to Improve SaaS Product Adoption & Awareness syndicated from https://unbounce.com

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theseoxpert · 7 years

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Nine crazy predictions for SEO in 2017

With the introduction of AI into SERP rankings, 2017 will be packed with changes. Here are some predictions for SEO in 2017.

It’s January, which means you’ve probably read about 200 expert predictions on the future of SEO in 2017 by now. But if you stick with me, I promise this post won’t be like any of the other SEO predictions posts you’ve seen so far.

When it comes to making SEO predictions, a lot of experts take the safe route. We all know mobile SEO is going to be increasingly important. Talking about the obvious is always safe.

If you’re anything like me, the SEO predictions for 2017 have let you feeling underwhelmed. No one has been sticking their neck out this year.

I think it’s time for a few more bold predictions – nine of them in fact. These SEO predictions will be a bit more out there – maybe you could even call them a little crazy.

Just don’t blame me if/when these predictions become reality. I’m just the prognosticator, basing my predictions on the things I’ve seen lately – and where I believe Google is heading next.

1. We’ll Experience the Biggest Rankings Shift in the History of Google…

Major algorithmic changes are always a big deal – from old school classics like Florida and Caffeine to more modern algorithmic updates like Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, and RankBrain.

So here’s my first SEO prediction for 2017: We’ll see the biggest shift in rankings in the history of Google.

Machine learning and AI was an undeniable force in 2016. And I expect machine learning signals to become a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. In case you’re unfamiliar with RankBrain, here’s a simplified diagram that breaks it down:

It’s been my theory that RankBrain (and/or other machine-learning elements within Google’s core algorithm) are increasingly rewarding pages that have high user engagement. In other words: Google has built its own ultimate unicorn detector to ensure that the pages people are clicking on and engaging with the most are rewarded with better search positions.

2. …But Nobody Will Notice Anything!

So here’s my second SEO prediction for 2017: Even though we’re about to see the biggest shift in the history of Google rankings, nobody will notice anything.

RankBrain is more subtle than updates like Panda and Penguin, where up to 90 percent of your organic traffic disappeared instantly overnight. It was easy to see such a ridiculously huge traffic drop, that occurred on a specific date, in your analytics.

But with RankBrain, the rankings shift is happening every day, bit by bit, rather than all at once in one big update. Google is shifting traffic away from your donkeys (pages with average or below average engagement) and toward your unicorns (pages that have 5-10x higher engagement metrics than normal).

3. Google Will Unite Featured Snippets & Organic Listings

Why is Google’s featured snippet so often different from its top-ranked organic listing? Basically, Google is currently saying to its users: “Our first listing isn’t really the correct answer, so use this other answer instead.”

My third SEO prediction for 2017: Google’s featured snippets and organic listing will converge.

Here’s my theory. Snippets were just a sandbox/testing environment where they could try out user engagement signals in search and the rest of the rankings didn’t use them. Now that they’ve bought into this idea, they can consolidate the two concepts.

4. Google Will Kill Organic Positions 6-10

As a result of new user-engagement signals being used in search rankings, fewer and fewer people are clicking on results in lower positions, while clicks on the top positions are trending higher. Check out this surprising click curve WordStream put together:

What’s it all mean? That it’s time for my next SEO prediction: Google will eliminate the bottom half of search results in 2017. (Bonus prediction: SEOs will freak out BIG TIME!)

As a result of machine learning, I believe Google will decide that it no longer needs to show positions 6-10. The decluttered SERP will be populated with more ads (which will generate higher CTRs than the organic listings they replaced).

Think it can’t happen? Let me remind you of that time waaaay back in early 2016 when Google killed right-side text ads on the desktop. But when you looked at the data, it made sense why Google did it: only 14.6 percent of desktop clicks came from the right ads.

What happened after Google eliminated right-side ads? CTRs increased and traffic remained steady.

I imagine the same will be true when Google eliminates the bottom half of search results. The actual impact for most websites should be minimal because most people aren’t clicking on those organic listings now anyway.

5. We’ll Say Goodbye to Local SEO

The local SEO train has gone on for way too long. These are 100 percent commercial queries and Google’s next big land grab.

There’s no easy way to cushion the blow for my fifth SEO prediction for 2017, so I’ll just say it: local SEO as we’ve known it will die.

Google plans to make $5 billion from local search. So that means one thing: goodbye local organic packs.

6. Black Hat SEOs Will Create Fake Engagement

One thing we’ve been talking a lot about so far in this post is the importance of engagement metrics and how this can impact your SEO success. This includes metrics from click-through rates, to dwell time, to task completion rates (a.k.a. conversion rates).

Well, you know how it goes. Anytime somebody sees some success with an SEO tactic, then everyone starts doing it. But a select few who can’t make that tactic work legitimately will figure out a way to fake it.

This is exactly how the whole link buying problem got started 10 years ago. People knew links increased rankings, so people went crazy buying links, not worrying about quality, only quantity.

Which brings us to SEO prediction number six: CTR and engagement hacks will become the new black hat SEO.

Look for huge spammer innovation once more SEOs finally start realizing that improving CTR and dwell time also can help improve rankings in today’s machine-learning world. The black hat revolution won’t be televised, but people in the know will know all about it.

7. Google Will Declare War on Tool Providers

So, my seventh SEO prediction is that Google will declare war on tool providers that violate their TOS.

Why should Google care more about this now? Probably because rank checkers screw up CTR and bounce calculations.

If Google wanted to be really mean about it, they could devise a kind of penalty where if they found that you were doing excessive rank checking of your domain, they could infer you were violating the TOS.

8. An SEO Company Will Die

Following on the previous prediction, and other factors, here’s my next SEO prediction for 2017: one or more major SEO vendors or service companies will be sold off.

9. SEO Will Be More Valuable Than Ever

Though much of this post may seem like doom and gloom, one thing’s for sure: SEO won’t die. (Though it’s an extremely safe bet the entire practice of SEO will be declared dead and/or dying at least a few times this year!)

Despite all of its challenges (and the many more on the horizon), SEO will be an even more valuable marketing channel to the lucky winners in 2017 and beyond.

My final SEO prediction: Fewer and fewer winners will win bigger and bigger SEO jackpots.

Click here to view original web page at searchenginewatch.com

Just like every year before, SEO is DEAD… Long live SEO!

The post Nine crazy predictions for SEO in 2017 appeared on The SEO Xpert.

from The SEO Xpert http://www.theseoxpert.com/nine-crazy-predictions-for-seo-in-2017/

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sheilalmartinia · 7 years

Text

Nine crazy predictions for SEO in 2017

When it comes to making SEO predictions, a lot of experts take the safe route. We all know mobile SEO is going to be increasingly important. Talking about the obvious is always safe.

If you’re anything like me, the SEO predictions for 2017 have let you feeling underwhelmed. No one has been sticking their neck out this year.

Mobile will be big?

UX will matter?

Really?! You don’t say!

I think it’s time for a few more bold predictions – nine of them in fact. These SEO predictions will be a bit more out there – maybe you could even call them a little crazy.

Just don’t blame me if/when these predictions become reality. I’m just the prognosticator, basing my predictions on the things I’ve seen lately – and where I believe Google is heading next.

1. We’ll Experience the Biggest Rankings Shift in the History of Google…

Major algorithmic changes are always a big deal – from old school classics like Florida and Caffeine to more modern algorithmic updates like Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, and RankBrain.

So here’s my first SEO prediction for 2017: We’ll see the biggest shift in rankings in the history of Google.

RankBrain helps Google select and prioritize the signals it uses for ranking. Engagement is one of the very important signals Google looks at for ranking.

2. …But Nobody Will Notice Anything!

Remember how, for a few months before RankBrain was officially announced in that Bloomberg article, everyone in the SEO industry knew a big algorithm update was brewing? Remember all the discussion on Twitter, Facebook, and the top search industry publications?

Yeah, me neither because it absolutely didn’t happen!

So here’s my second SEO prediction for 2017: Even though we’re about to see the biggest shift in the history of Google rankings, nobody will notice anything.

Whatever SEO rank-checking tools or weather reports you’re looking at aren’t set up to notice these small and gradual types of changes. They just get lost in the noise.

3. Google Will Unite Featured Snippets & Organic Listings

Huh? Why isn’t the first listing simply “the answer” instead?

My third SEO prediction for 2017: Google’s featured snippets and organic listing will converge.

4. Google Will Kill Organic Positions 6-10

(Note: This data was obtained from the Google Search Console, tracking the same set of keywords in the Internet marketing niche for three separate 30-day periods)

This chart really illustrates the idea of a subtle change, as discussed in my second prediction.

What’s it all mean? That it’s time for my next SEO prediction: Google will eliminate the bottom half of search results in 2017. (Bonus prediction: SEOs will freak out BIG TIME!)

What happened after Google eliminated right-side ads? CTRs increased and traffic remained steady.

5. We’ll Say Goodbye to Local SEO

Google Shopping (a.k.a. Product Search) used to be great. Then Google changed the game and Google Shopping became a 100 percent pay-to-play system.

The local SEO train has gone on for way too long. These are 100 percent commercial queries and Google’s next big land grab.

There’s no easy way to cushion the blow for my fifth SEO prediction for 2017, so I’ll just say it: local SEO as we’ve known it will die.

Google plans to make $5 billion from local search. So that means one thing: goodbye local organic packs.

6. Black Hat SEOs Will Create Fake Engagement

Google already has a pretty lengthy list of tactics that are against its Webmaster Guidelines. Well, expect that list to expand in (or after) 2017.

This is exactly how the whole link buying problem got started 10 years ago. People knew links increased rankings, so people went crazy buying links, not worrying about quality, only quantity.

Which brings us to SEO prediction number six: CTR and engagement hacks will become the new black hat SEO.

7. Google Will Declare War on Tool Providers

Why does Google have a TOS (terms of service) and not enforce it?

Companies like Raven Tools have been bullied to not include rank checking. But Google allows it on some tools but not others?

So, my seventh SEO prediction is that Google will declare war on tool providers that violate their TOS.

Why should Google care more about this now? Probably because rank checkers screw up CTR and bounce calculations.

A few Google people have tweeted about this actually.

8. An SEO Company Will Die

Following on the previous prediction, and other factors, here’s my next SEO prediction for 2017: one or more major SEO vendors or service companies will be sold off.

Google sometimes “makes an example” of a small company they believe is behaving badly by publicly punishing them so badly that they close.

9. SEO Will Be More Valuable Than Ever

Despite all of its challenges (and the many more on the horizon), SEO will be an even more valuable marketing channel to the lucky winners in 2017 and beyond.

My final SEO prediction: Fewer and fewer winners will win bigger and bigger SEO jackpots.

from Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/01/12/nine-crazy-predictions-for-seo-in-2017/

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lawrenceseitz22 · 7 years

Text

Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 113

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 113 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://ift.tt/1NZu6N2.

Announcement

Adam: Welcome to Hump Day Hangouts, this is episode 113, the episode where my mic goes crazy, so I’m going to pass things off real quick to Bradley, everybody can go down and say hi. Bradley, if you don’t [inaudible 00:00:13]

Bradley: Yeah, I will takeover, because Adam’s mic is not cooperating today.

Hey everybody, this is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery, this is the Hump Day Hangouts episode 113, It’s January 4, 2017, we’ve got a full house on. Adam who can’t speak, we’ve got Chris. Hey Chris, how are you?

Chris: Doing good, happy to be here in the new year. We’re going to have a strong year.

Bradley: That’s right.

Chris: Good to have everybody on board.

Bradley: Hernan how are you?

Hernan: Hey guys, hey everyone. It’s really, really good to be here. Again, super excited for 2017, we have a lot of stuff going on in January, February, it’s going to be a hell of a year man, so I’m excited.

Bradley: And last but not least, our mad scientists Marco. What’s up Marco?

Marco: Hey man, what’s going on? Trying to deal with this stinking volcano.

Bradley: Oh yeah, it’s acting up?

Marco: It’s been acting since I got here, but the wind is blowing this way, so I have ash all over.

Bradley: Nice. Volcanic ash, people pay money to like take baths in that shit, you know that?

Marco: Yeah I’m going to start packaging it man. If anybody wants some volcanic ash let me know. I’ll mail it to you.

Bradley: You sell it by the kilo.

Marco: Yeah right, Kilos! Doing Kilos ma.

Bradley: Bricks of volcanic ash.

All right guys, the only announcement we have today is at least because Adam can’t speak and he usually does all our announcements, is we got a webinar next Monday for a really cool video marketing suite, or software, it’s an online application. It’s kind of like Syndwire, but on steroids. It’s like an enterprise level version of Syndwire. The developers have been working on it for months and asked for feedback and stuff like that from us. We’re going to have a webinar next Monday. We’re going to send out the registration e-mail probably tomorrow. I think Adam said we’re going to do that tomorrow. I just want to give everybody a heads up. If you don’t have a powerful video marketing suite yet, or software, or tool, it might be something you want to check out.

If you’ve already purchased Video Marketing Blitz, which is Abs product. We did a promotion with that a few months ago, then you probably don’t need to attend this upcoming webinar, because you’ve got pretty much everything already. For those of you who that maybe missed out on that, this is a comparable solution, and it’s quite powerful.

In fact, I think this application that we’re going to be hosting the webinar about on Monday has less of a learning curve then Video Marketing Blitz. It doesn’t have all the features that that did, but it has less of a learning curve, and it’s really, really powerful. Anyways, just wanted to give everyone a heads up on that.

Is there anything else we need to announce guys before we get moving?

Hernan: I think we’re good.

Bradley: Okay, cool.

All right, let me grab the screen and we’ll get into it.

Okay cool. We got a lot of questions on the page already so let’s try to roll through these. Also, just a quick update guys, anybody that’s in IFTTT SEO academy, the update webinar number 8 is immediately following Hump Day Hangout, so be there or be square. If you don’t know how to get to it, go to the facebook group and click on the events tab and there will be a link that will take you over to the Google event page for the update webinar.

Random Search & CrowdSearch Campaigns

So Michael’s up first, he says, “Happy news years guys. I have started using crowd search and wanted your opinion on a few ways I am using it. Number one, I like random browsing on some of the searches, but with random browsing on I get a lot of instances of 15-30 seconds of time on any one page. Example, seven eight page views in four minutes. Do you use it?”

Yeah, sometimes just to switch up, Michael. The search activity, or the browsing activity of the bot, or whatever it is. I switch it up just so there’s some randomization there. Okay. I wouldn’t worry so much about that. Just turn it on sometimes, and sometimes don’t. That’s all.

“Number two, I have a couple campaigns that start at WP or Tumblr that go to the Google+ post page and then click on a post going to my website. I vary what post is clicked. Good idea?”

Yes, absolutely Michael, that’s social referral traffic. That’s a great idea. That’s one of the more powerful ways of using CrowdSearch in my opinion. All right?

“Number three is when I see a link show up in Google search console, I add that to CrowdSearch. Example last month I had 5 visits from an unknown Pinterest board show in analytics. I checked it and is a good board themed for my industry, so I added a campaign for a few searches a month coming from that Pinterest board. Is this a good type of things to do?”

Again, yes Michael. That’s a great idea, and that’s actually a really great idea, is to go into search console guys, and take a look at … If any of you that are using CrowdSearch, if you’re not you probably should be, but go into the search console and take a look at your search queries report, and take a look at some of the keywords, the search phrases that have given your site impressions for that maybe you didn’t get many clicks for. If you highlight in search console, the click through rate it will show impressions, click through rate, clicks and position, search position. Highlight all of those, or check all of those boxes, and then you can go through and take a look at search queries that are giving your site impressions but maybe your rank position is such that you’re not getting any clicks. In other words, maybe you’re position like say 14 for example, and so you’re not getting any clicks right? Because whoever goes to page two of Google. It’s rare right?

Those would be good terms to actually set up some CrowdSearch campaigns. Be very, very conservative on that stuff though guys. Because if your site’s been given impressions for a certain keyword search phrase, and it doesn’t have any clicks, and there’s a history of no clicks, and then all of a sudden you have it doing click throughs, exact match keyword plus click through, and you have a significant number of that, that’s going to look unnatural. I would do it really, really conservatively, and then you can kind of ramp it up. But you should see a little bit of movement from that if you set it up correctly.

You can also do some of the social stuff like what you’re talking about, Michael, here. Some social referral traffic to that page. To the page in the example that I’m talking about because that will help too, and that will be a little bit safer than doing direct click throughs from search, if that makes sense. I’d mix it up and kind of add some diversification to that.

Good questions though Micheal.

Getting Off Twitter SandBox With Twitter SEO Academy

Greg’s up. I read this one earlier. I’m going to actually let Marco handle this. Guys, I can’t give anybody any advice on Twitter for anything. I just don’t use it very often at all. I can’t give you any advice on Twitter, Greg, but Marco can probably answer this. The only thing I know is that the few times that I’ve … Not the few times, actually every time I create a new Twitter account for an IFTTT ring or something, or I get one back from our builders, it’s a branded ring, then I will go in and manually tweet and re-tweet a few times and do some direct messaging and stuff like that on the account to get it out of the sandbox. I’ve never had any issues with Greg, but I know that other people have, so Marco, can you comment on this question please?

Marco: Yeah, I was just taking a look at it. I’m just wondering if he went into the update section and if he tried the 10 tweet out of the sandbox method that Dr. Gary updated in there. Because it works, I haven’t had any problems. You can get sandboxed again if there isn’t enough activity, if you don’t do anything with the trader profile and it’s just sitting there, you can get sandboxed again, and every time that I’ve gone in and done the 10 tweet, some people do three or four and their out of the sandbox. Sometimes it takes 10, but I haven’t had to take any more than that.

So Greg, go into the advance section, and take a look at the 10 tweets out of the sandbox method.

Bradley: Very good, thank you.

Like you said Marco, generally probably 9 out of 10 of the twitter accounts that I’ll get back from our builders for branded networks, I’ll go in and I’ll spend 15 or 20 minutes tops on just interacting on engaging with other tweeters or Twitter members, or whatever you call them, and it gets me out of the sandbox. I’ve never had it take more than 15 or 20 minutes, and that’s it.

Building Stronger SEO With IFTTT

Okay, Asi’s up. Asi says, “I was just wondering if there is a way to make stronger SEO with IFTTT besides the tier one ring for a website, I am looking for something stronger. I was doing RSS feed, mixing it to three tiers. Is that okay?”

Sure that’s fine Asi, as long as you’re minimizing your footprint on tier two and three. You certainly can do that, that’s not a problem, it’s just a matter of making sure that you’re hiding your footprint I believe you’re in a foreign market, so you can probably get away with a hell of a lot more than we can here in the US. As far as spammyness, but I would still try to minimize your footprint in tier two and tier three as much as possible. If you follow the training we talk about how to do that.

Besides that, we also did a webinar with Damon Nelson, and he has that new application called RSS Masher, and I’ve got the link to that here. I’m actually going to drop this on the top of the page. This is the webinar that I did Damon about, I don’t know, two weeks ago or something like that where we go through how to use RSS Masher. Why I advocate or encourage the use of it now for tier two log syndication networks, or second tier blog syndication networks, which before, for the last year and a half, close to two years I’ve been preaching against doing that, but with RSS Masher, it’s something that can be done in my opinion now, safely, and it’s manageable using this application. Whereas before, you could still do it using related content feeds at tier two, but it was pain in the ass.

It was a lot of additional work to set up and it was hard to maintain. Difficult to maintain so it just was too cumbersome and so that’s why I had recommended against doing it for so long. But this makes it a hell of a lot more manageable. There’s still more work involved. You still have to be careful with what you’re doing, but this makes it a lot more manageable. If you’re using this, then you can certainly go out to tier two or tier three and reduce or minimize footprint issues. You should be able to get quite a bit of traction using that.

The other thing that you can do is make sure … Let me just put this real quick on the page webinar. Even if you guys aren’t interested in picking up RSS Masher, I’d still go watch that because it’s pretty powerful what you can do with some of the feeds and stuff.

By the way, obviously there’s a button that will pop up when you start watching that webinar with the option to go purchase RSS Masher. Damon’s left the R backdoor special offer pre-launch offer open for us only, or as far as I know. He’s leaving it open for us, let’s put it that way, until the end of this month. The end of January, so I would recommend if you’re even considering you should do it sometime soon before that offer closes.

The other thing that you can do is power up your tier one ring. You can boost that, build links to it. That’s something that we recommend at all times, is to always to power up that tier one ring, and continually publish content, because that’s what’s going to help to theme that network and make it stronger and build more authority.

The last line of his comment is pretty cool. It’s says, “By the way, the website I did it with him got to the first and second spot in a very high competition keyword and stuck there like glue.” That’s awesome, from an IFTTT ring. That’s great.

Hernan: Just to add to what you were saying Bradley, if you’re looking for something stronger you can always try vodka. I’m just kidding. The realities is that IFTTT … Any project that we’re starting right now has an IFTTT attached to it, no matter what, because it will equalize your link profile and make it so much natural. You can actually start building some other kind of links. I like to go with links that will actually bring you traffic. That’s why we’re doing IFTTT, but you can with PDF links, Web 2.0s, PBNs if that’s something you want to do. Those will actually bring you results and you will be more protected, and you will also have several link targets to point to, because you’re using IFTTTT.

The truth of the matter is that depending on your niche sometimes IFTTTT is always enough, sometime it isn’t. To be completely honest, on super competitive niches, they do not exclude themselves. It’s not like we are saying you do IFTTT and don’t do anything else. No by any means whatsoever, this is an addition to whatever any other thing that you are doing. It’s a smart addition it will actually leverage whatever other thing any other link building you’re doing. PBNs, Web 2.0s whatever. It will actually help you with that to run better and faster. You know?

Bradley: Yeah, IFTTT SEO is the foundation. It’s the starting point. It’s rarely the be all end all. I wish it would be, I wish it was that easy. But if it were that easy, we’d all be out of work, because everybody would be doing it. But it is definitely the foundation. I always build upon an IFTTT network. I start with that and just blogging, content marketing and see what kind of results I can get from that and I assess it and determine what else has to be done from there and then add to it going forward.

Double 301 Redirect / Link Laundering

Mark’s up next, he says, “Hey guys, happy New Year, hope you had a wonderful Christmas period! Got a 301 question for you and would love some advice. I don’t know if you have heard or used SERP drive but it basically does an expired domain crawl for you, like a blue chip back links style crawl, and one search is just 12 bucks so I’m considering doing one maybe two 301 redirects to a lead gen site, or any advice or best practices would be awesome. I know this may be more mastermind stuff but even a sly hint would be great, ya don’t have to give the farm away although I suppose we would let you give it away just this once if you must.”

I’m assuming what you’re trying to do is like a double 301 redirect or what we used to call “link laundering”. You know, I don’t do nearly as much of that as I used to because it’s become less effective, which is normally what happens in SEO. Right? You find something that works and you exploit the shit out of it and everybody else does it too and then it becomes less and less effective over time. That’s generally what happens. About a year and a half ago, about probably between two years ago and a year ago, all of last year basically, not 2016 but 2015, we were doing a lot of that, the double 301 redirect stuff and it was working really, really well. I noticed it started to not work as well.

You can still do it, but what I would recommend doing is if you’re going to be doing like redirects to boost properties, I would still boost a buffer site prior to … Instead of doing a double redirect direct to the money site, I would do maybe a double redirect to a buffer page with a DoFollow Link with a keyword anchor back to your site. That’s typically how I found to get better results because, again, it became less effective over time and one of the ways I was able to increase its effectiveness again was to instead of going direct to the money site, I would go through a buffer property. I don’t know if that makes sense, Mark, because I’m not 100% sure that that’s what you’re asking about, but does anybody else read this a different way than I do?

Marco: Yeah, no I just want to tell them that the reason why it lost effectiveness is because of the distance graph. Right? Most of the sites that we were buying were garbage domains that weren’t linking to any authority or weren’t receiving any links from any authority. They boosted subdomains with garbage. Right?

Bradley: And they were not relevant most of the time.

Marco: Correct. That’s why they stopped working, but if you can find a really good domain with a good link, now you don’t have to 301 that because it’s clean. It would still work, but you don’t have to 301 a good website. You’re buying spammy Chinese domains that with high trust flow, high domain authority. We don’t even look at those metrics anymore, and we would just double 301 n launder them and they were working really well until Google came up with the distance graph. Once that started being applied, then it lost effectiveness of course because of the link quality that was coming into those websites and out. It wasn’t related to anything that was trusted or authoritative or that was in any way related to the niche that we were working in, which is what we’re looking for now. If you can do those three things, if you can find something that has good quality links from at least one trusted source, then it’s a really good domain to apply, but you don’t have to double 301 that, again, because it’s clean.

Bradley: Yeah, and the other thing is, and that’s in part why I started going to a buffer site instead, because you can inject relevancy into that stream, into that link stream through the buffer site. In other words, you could still use, I haven’t done this in probably eight months at least, since the last time I set one of these up, but you could still use some of those Chinese spammy domains that just had a shit ton of juice coming into them, a bunch of link juice coming in because they had thousands or hundreds of thousands of backlinks built to them, but totally spammy, you could still use those in a link laundering stream.

But instead of going direct to the money site, which we used to do, or to a subdomain, now I go to a buffer site because a buffer site I could out a relevant article, so content is relevant, and then use an anchor text link so that can inject relevancy at that point into that link stream. But again, I would shy away from doing that now, because really all we’re looking for now is relevancy more so than metrics or anything else. It’s more about relevancy. I would rather buy a domain, an expired domain that has relevancy but only a couple links and maybe not even the greatest metrics, but the relevant backlinks to that domain relevant to the topic in which I’m going to be using to link to, if that makes sense. I’d rather buy those domains than go out and buy a domain that’s got incredibly good metrics or high metrics but is non-relevant, unless they’re incredibly good metrics. If that makes sense. Even so, I would still push that to a buffer site where I can inject relevancy.

That’s kind of more like MasterMind stuff, Mark. We can get into it a hell of a lot deeper if you want to join us there.

Google Doc Description Function

Virginia says, “I saw in RYS Speed that you were adding a description to each Google Doc. But G has changed the look of that site again. I searched online for an hour to find out how. It looks like G removed this feature. Am I wrong again? Thanks Toby.”

As far as I know Toby, you can still add information to G Docs. He’s talking about metadata, Marco.

Marco: Yeah, and I just checked, I dropped a whole Wikipedia page in the description. It’s still spammylicious.

Bradley: Yep. Still spammylicious. In fact, I can probably find … It’s just the info button on the file itself, correct? I don’t have it here so I’d have to actually look at a doc.

Marco: That’s all it is.

Bradley: Yep.

Marco: It’s a nice big icon on the top right.

Bradley: It’s just an “I” icon for info. You click on that you’ll open … It pops out from the right side, like the sidebar area and then you can paste in metadata.

Marco: You have two options. You have details and activity. You want to click on details instead of activity.

Bradley: And spam the ever living hell out of it.

Marco: Yeah, do some lovely stuff to that.

Bradley: It’s like a spam bucket, it’s awesome.

Using RYS To Rank Sites Without Google Verified Business Pages

Paul says, “Hi guys. I’m back from my trip to the Philippines and have a lot to catch up on.”

Glad to have you back, Paul.

He says, “First I want to comment on the RSS Masher. I got the program, put it into action and its working great on all of my tier two networks. I like it, and time will tell how it performs producing traffic and ranking.”

That’s great Paul, that’s awesome. I’m glad it’s working for you.

“My question is on RYS again, I have had the best success with the service with my clients, and now I want to use it on my own sites. I am building out “near to me” sites. I have one site that will pay $141 per click when I get it ranked without the Google verified business pages for each one, without NAP, et cetera. How can I use and incorporate RYS to help get these sites ranked? And a follow up question; after I get the stacks back, what can I do with the stacks to increase the rankings and visibility? Happy New Year to everyone.”

Paul, yeah, well first of all, obviously I’ve been using RYS or drive stacks for local mainly, but we’ve got … We actually did another test recently, within the last couple of weeks Marco and I, that yesterday in ranking on page one for a “near me” term that gets like 8,800 searches per month. Guys, this is a drive file with zero backlinks and it’s ranked on page one, I think position six for 8,800 search term, it’s a “near me” term, a “near me” search phrase. It gets 8,800 searches per month on average and we’re number six with zero backlinks for a drive file, it’s freaking awesome.

Marco: With zero nothing because we did-

Bradley: Didn’t do anything, yeah. That’s what I’m saying, it’s just a drive file that was created to the same specifications that we teach in RYS Academy. Anyways, yeah, you can use it for local, that’s typically how I’ve been using it because a majority of the work that I do is local, but you can boost anything with drive stacks, guys. Anything, a video, a press release, a website, organic or local, national or local, it doesn’t matter what you’re trying to rank in the maps pack organically. You build links back to your website, inner pages, silo pages, using the drive stack and then obviously the sites, sites.google.com site as well.

How do you boost the power of those or you can build links to them. Remember, those are all drive, they’re Google domains essentially. Everything’s on the Google domain so you can use that to your advantage and build links to the drive stacks. Because you’re letting Google’s domain actually filter all that spam out, you’re basically just boosting it and it doesn’t take much really, to get some pretty good results with the drive files just by throwing some links at them. Marco, what else would you suggest?

Marco: I think that from what we’ve seen for “near me” it’s so simple that you just throw it up and it’s going to pretty much rank and then just by adding our own link building service. Go through us and order when you order the stack, order the link building. It’s get dripped out anyway right? It doesn’t get hammered all at once and that should be enough. But I mean, there’s other things that he could do with it.

Bradley: He could crowdsearch.

Marco: Yeah, crowdsearch, PBNs, there’s a bunch of things that you could do if it doesn’t wok. You could buy a couple of domains with Bluechip Backlinks maybe push them into the stack and out to wherever you want it to go. But the stuff inside the stack rank anyway.

Bradley: That’s right. That’s the thing, think about this Paul, you can take a GOO.GL short URL and a link from inside a drive file to your money site and then set up, like crowdsearch for example, some search CT spam, click through spam campaigns to search for the drive files. Put a hashtag or something in the file and use that as part of the search phrase so that crowdsearch will quickly identify the file and click on it and then click your GOO.GL short URL that goes back to your landing page or your website, if that makes sense, because what you’re doing is you’re … With the GOO.GL short URL, you’re injecting Google analytics into the link, like right into the link stream so you’re allowing Google to see where traffic is coming from and activity.

You can do that with the drive files so that you’re basically telling Google, “Hey, I found this drive file in search results and clicked on it through to the money site or to this website over here,” and those are strong ranking signals. That’s something that you can do as well, very powerful, and that will help your drive files to rank too by the way.

Giving Opinion On Non-English Site In Local Language And English Attribution

All right, this person’s next. “Hi guys. I have a question about content curation: is it okay to give opinion on non-English site in local language and English attribution?”

I imagine so. I’ll let Marco and Hernan comment on that, but I can’t imagine why that would be a problem.

Marco: I defer to Hernan on this one because I don’t know.

Hernan: That’s actually a good question. Let me check it out because I-

Bradley: Wow, this guy’s the winner, we got to give him a prize for stumping us.

Hernan: Yeah, right. It hasn’t happened before. A non-English siting local language and English attribution … I’m not fully understanding the question. Hold on.

Marco: He wants to give his opinion but it’s a non-English site in whatever his local language it. He wants to add English attribution, is that okay?

Hernan: Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah. I get it now. Okay, so what you would doing would be to grab English news and put your opinion and then back to the English site. Is that what he’s saying? Back to the English-

Marco: I think so.

Hernan: Well, to be honest I haven’t done it, like I haven’t done it before because I think that you should have plenty of information in news on your native language, you know? That’s my opinion anyways.

Bradley: If it’s the same topic though, I can’t imagine … I don’t know, maybe, I’ve never tested it either so this is purely based on assumption, or this is purely speculation, as long as it’s the same topic, I imagine Google understands that it’s topically relevant, even if it’s different languages. Right?

Hernan: Well, yes and no because what I found out is that even if you are … The reality is that that’s why doing a CO in other languages is so easy, because the grammar and the syntax and everything that has to do with language recognition in English is so advanced that when you are a company, like Google for example, and you need to invest your resources and your people, of course you will invest it in English. You will need like grammar people and language whatever … That’s why I do in Spanish or French or German, whatever is so much easier because Google hasn’t catch up to that point of what he can easily recognize those kind of patterns. But again, I wouldn’t know why would you want to put some …

The reality with curation is like copy and pasting some sort of the article, some part of the article like a paragraph. If you’re doing that, that would have to be in English for example. Let’s say that you where building a website in Spanish, you will have pieces of English content. It’s kind of weird for the tier one or it’s even kind of weird for the visitor. You know what I mean? If I land you into a Spanish website and it has like little snippets of English, I’m just thinking, “This guy is translating poorly,” or whatever. It’s kind of weird from the visitor point of view so if you cannot find any kind of news, maybe you’re in a really specific niche, I don’t know, I haven’t done it so I cannot advise. I can only advise on the perspective of somebody that lands on a website and happens to find content in various languages. That would be my only advise.

Bradley: I would just assume he’s having trouble finding whatever particular topic he’s curating about, finding content in his native language and that’s why he’s asking about that. From a strictly SEO standpoint, again this is based purely on speculation, but I would imagine that it would still work, but from what Hernan’s saying, I would totally agree, it would look weird for any visitor. You know what I mean? I was talking on a purely technical basis, it may still work. You’d have to test it to be honest with you. But from a user, a visitor standpoint it just really wouldn’t make sense. I agree with you. I would just test it. I mean guys, we don’t have all the answers all the time unfortunately. Generally if we don’t have an answer, what we do is go set up a test, which is something that you can do as well. If we have the answer, we’ll share it but if we don’t then we generally will set up a test and that’s something that you guys can do as well and we encourage that.

Marco: That advice that I would give him is that if you’re not doing English, it’s not really that complicated because as Hernan said, Google will invest resources in where most of the money is, which is English language, and then where it’s really highly spam. I don’t know what language he’s working in or what niche or whatever, but I would say, “Man, don’t even sweat it.”

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: IFTTT, oh crap. I don’t know if I should give this away. I’m getting 40 to 50,000 visitors a month on a website where all I do is copy/paste a Wikipedia page but I push it through Google translate because if Google says that this is the proper translation, then it should work regardless whether it’s legible to a human being. I’ll take the page and I’ll translate it to the foreign language that I’m targeting and I’ll just use the Wikipedia translation and it works like gangbusters. I’m at about 40,000 visitors a month just from that, literally copy/paste into Google translate. That’s how easy it is in foreign language.

Bradley: I see an application in the works, a software app. Google translate plugin or something that just automatically copies in foreign languages, niches. That would work well.

Video Spinner

Brian’s up next, he says,“Do you do any video spinning? Any recommendations on a good spinner. Saw a webinar where someone had 30 new videos on one channel and it helped ranked videos in Google.”

I’m not sure what that last part means Brian, but video spinning is typically something that is included if you have a video marketing suite of tools. Like for example, we just mentioned Video Marketing Blitz at the beginning of this webinar, which is Abs product, there’s a spinner in there. You can buy standalone spinners. Basically video spinning, the way that I understand it, is just taking a single video file and making multiple variations of that file. It doesn’t really change the actual content of the video much. It just changes the file type or maybe it will swap still frames at the beginning and at the end out and change the duration and change the file type and that kind of stuff so that it gives to YouTube unique versions of the video.

It’s a way to where you can take the same video and create dozens of copies of that video and upload them to the same channel without YouTube algorithmically detecting that they’re duplicates. However, any type of spam tactic like that or spam strategy, which is what that is, if a manual reviewer were to come look at it, they’re going to terminate the channel for spam, there’s just no question. That’s why I’ll do that kind of stuff, spin videos and spam and stuff like that, but only with specific channels that are designated for that. I don’t ever do any kind of spun videos crap on money channels anymore because I’ve had channels terminated for that stuff. It’s crazy because it’s hit or miss. I mean I’ve got channels out there that … I’ve got a channel that’s got like 968 videos on it that are all basically spun video. They’re all shitty videos, all complete spam and that channel is still up and still generating leads now, which is unbelievable because it’s been up for like three years. I don’t know why it hasn’t been terminated yet.

Anyways, most video marketing suites are going to have a spinner in them. You can buy standalone spinners, I don’t recommend any of them because … The only ones that I would recommend are the ones that come with another suite of tools already. For example, Video Marketing Blitz, Mega-Ray, the product that we’re going to be doing a webinar on on Monday, I believe it has a spinner in there as well. Most of the more advanced tools will have that included already. I’ve tested some of the standalone video spinners in the past, like years ago, and I wasn’t real happy with any of them. The quality of the videos usually came out pretty poor. They’re probably better now, I’m sure they are, but again, I don’t really do a whole lot of spam stuff in YouTube anymore because it’s just less and less effective.

Two years ago, you could get aways with a bunch, even a year ago, you could still create a business basically out of spamming YouTube all the time. What I found now is that people are becoming more used to ignoring spam videos and just skipping over them and so they don’t convert. If you’re doing spam stuff in YouTube specifically for SEO purposes, then fine, spam away. Spam until your heart’s content, but I wouldn’t recommend doing spam stuff in YouTube anymore for like traffic generation or for actual conversions. To me, it’s just based on my own campaigns, it really has plummeted the effectiveness. Conversions just suck whenever you do spam stuff. For SEO purposes, it works fine.

Usually spun videos guys, like for example, if you have a nice quality video and you want to target 20 different keywords with the same video, you would use a spinner for something like that, but I wouldn’t put all those spun videos so that you target 20 different keywords on the same channel or if you are going to put them on the same channel, don’t ever do that on your money channel. Do it on a separate channel that specifically used for spam purposes only so that you protect your money channel.

Adding Websites With Embedded IFrame In Google Search Console For Faster Crawl Rate

All right, Ivan’s up. He says, “Happy New Year guys, last week I created and published a one page Google site with the new interface with a Google map, Google presentation, Youtube, okay.” He says, “Now I want to create another Google site with the old Google site but the same content but using IFrames. I watched the videos from RYS Academy. These two sites are companion sites for my main site. Two questions: Is it a good idea to add these two sites in my search console for them to be crawled faster? What about duplicate content?

Okay, first of all, I wouldn’t add both of them in the search console and not in the same account. I would add them into two different accounts, so like create a persona account, which you probably already have anyways and put one in one search console account, one in the other that way they’re both not the same site, sitting in the same search console account. If that makes sense. That’s what I would do. You can probably get away with it, it probably wouldn’t cause you any problems, but I would still separate them.

About duplicate content, duplicate content only exists on the same domain. If you have two pages on the same domain on a site, on your site that have the exact same content, that’s duplicate content. Two pages with the same content on different domains is not duplicate content. Okay? That’s a myth that has gone through our industry for years now guys, and if that were the case, press releases would tank everybody’s site every time someone used a press release. Social media posts would tank people’s sites, so don’t worry about the duplicate content issue unless it’s on the same domain.

Increasing Site Authority By Using RSS Feeds From Authoritative Sites

Ethan, “Hey guys, is utilizing RSS feeds from high authority sites, aka industry leaders, to populate your money sites with syndicated content on a regular basis an effective way to raise the authority of it?”

I wouldn’t do that Ethan, not automatically. I don’t like publishing other people’s content on a money site period, unless it’s been in a curated post because then we’re siting other people’s content but the post still originates from our blog, if that makes sense, from the money site blog. I wouldn’t automatically post content to a money site from RSS feeds, from even authority feeds. I would do it because … Unless you’re monitoring it on a daily basis, there could be some stuff that comes through that you don’t want on your site number one, also … I just wouldn’t do it. I’ve never done that. We use other people’s content all the time on money sites but we do it based upon curation, the strategies that we teach in Content Kingpin and that’s the proper way to do it so that we’re following the DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act guidelines as far as when we’re referencing or siting other people’s content. We follow all those rules so that the content comes out the way that Google likes it. Would you guys have any comment on that? Hernan, you do a lot of that stuff for PBNs, but what about money sites?

Hernan: No, money sites hardly ever to be completely honest. Anything and everything that I do for money sites is completely manual. You know? I try not to risk it. For PBNs, you can if you do it on a, how would you call it, on a sidebar for example. You can even have these feeds that update themselves, not RSS feeds but for example, Twitter feeds based on a hashtag or Pinterest boards based on whatever category, if you want to put those on your money site that’s probably better because those are, I would say, officially released by, for example, Google or Twitter. If you have a finance website you want to, I don’t know, show all the tweets from finance blogs, whatever, that could work. But in terms of [inaudible 00:40:30] et cetera, I only do it for PBNs but not for money sites.

Bradley: Yeah, and there’s plugins that you can use Ethan, that will, like so example you can add RSS feeds and it will give like a little news widget that you can add to the sidebar or footer of your site that will update with the headlines of that RSS feed but it won’t be actually populating your blog with content. In other words, you can set it up so that it’s dynamically updated and you can set it up with filters and things like that or go hand-select the feeds so that it’s related content, but the only thing that shows is the headline and it’s a clickable link that will go off site over to the content source. But that’s what I would do and I’ve done that. I’ve done that on money sites.

Typically, that’s stuff that I would do for PBNs and not so much for money sites, but you can still do that for money sites. That’s something that I would say is okay because then you’re not actually publishing content to your blog that’s from other sources. You’re just showing headlines in a widget, like a sidebar or a footer widget. Which again, that activity is dynamically updated. It will still keep the bots crawl in your site, but it won’t be republished content that’s just straight copied content from somebody else’s site, if that makes sense. With curation, you want to add commentary because then …

Guys, remember with a curated piece of content, it becomes an original piece of content because you’re curating multiple sources of content into one piece of content and you’re adding commentary, you’re injecting opinion. That in itself makes a unique piece of content, does that make sense? But when you’re just taking a straight 100% republished post from somebody else’s site and pasting it on your money site, then it’s zero original content. It’s copied content that you’re just republishing and so I just wouldn’t do it, not for money sites. Okay?

I agree with you on some of this stuff, but that’s why, Ethan, my suggestion is to hire a virtual assistant. If you haven’t gone through Content Kingpin, our course, it’s specifically set up for how to train a virtual assistant to do curating for you. A curator can curate posts on a money site. I’ll pay curators, a good curator for money sites, it just depends, anywhere between 5 to $15 per post, it really just depends on what it is that they’re doing and what the money site’s about. But $5 to $15 per post for money site curating, they’re top quality posts guys, top quality posts. Okay? By the way, if you hire somebody and pay them on an hourly basis, I like to pay on a per post basis, but like an hourly basis, you can hire a good curator from the Philippines and pay him $5 an hour and you can get three good curated posts out of about an hour and 20 minutes, a hour and a half, let’s say an hour and a half. For $7.50 you can get three really good curated post. If that makes sense.

For PBN curated posts, you can get posts done three per hour and you can pay 4 to $5 an hour for VAs to do that. That ends up being like $2 per post, $1.50-$2 per post and that content’s a hell of a lot better than buying that shit content from content farms that’s just spun garbage. Okay?

URL Structure For Faster Ranking

All right, Ethan’s up next, “Hey again, I have another question, this time about on-page optimization. For years, I was told that the best strategy is to try to rank for a topic rather than just a few keywords. However, I am frequently seeing high ranking pages in the SERPs that are VERY targeted for just a few keywords, especially in the URL structure. More specifically, I am noticing sites with the exact match of the main keyword in the URL structure ranking very well. For example, when searching the keyword “small business loans” sites with the URL structure, http://ift.tt/2iVxsZE. How do you guys structure URLs? Do you only put the main keyword you’re targeting in there, or do you add in additional relevant keywords?”

We’ve talked about this a lot on Hump Day Hangouts and all the other webinars that we do but the way that it has been for the last few years has been the four main things that the bots look at when they come to crawl the page, Google bot especially is the SEO title, the URL, the page title, which is the H1 tag, and then the meta description. Those are the first four things, they’re in the header guys. Google looks at those first and so typically I will only put the exact match keyword in the SEO title. That’s the meta title that shows in the search results, that’s where I put it. That is the most effective place to put an exact match keyword.

One of our members, Dr. Gary, one of the co-founders of RYS Academy, he recently did some tests on that to prove that as well, that the SEO title was still the most important place to have the exact match keyword. I don’t typically put the exact match keyword in any more than one location out of those four. Right? I will use variations for the URL, the H1, and the meta description. I’ll use, you know, related keyword phases, co-occurring keyword phrases, but I typically will only put the exact match keyword in the SEO title. The URL will usually be a truncated or succinct version of it unless it’s an exact match domain in which case it would already be in the URL, but I typically don’t use exact match domains anymore either. Okay?

Again, I think it’s better … Guys, you don’t have to hit Google over the head with keywords anymore because of RankBrain. It understands, and Hummingbird, it understands semantic relationships between words a hell of a lot better. If you add the SEO title, the exact match keyword and the SEO title, you’re telling Google, “Hey, that’s what this page is about.” Then you can basically sprinkle throughout the rest of the content or in those other three locations, the URL, page title or H1 title, and in the meta description, variations of that keyword to kind of reinforce it. That’s how I do it Ethan, and the reason I say that is because it’s been working for me for about the last two and a half years really well and I don’t see how any … If you’re only putting the exact match keyword in one of those four locations, how could you ever get penalized for on page SEO, for over optimization, if that makes sense. You can still get penalized for off page shit, no doubt. But how could your page ever be penalized with a [Panda 00:46:52] penalty if you only put the exact match keyword in one location, out of those four I mean. You’d still have it in the content, but you don’t need to hit Google over the head with … Keyword doesn’t need to be near as high as it used to be either. Right?

Wow, we’ve had a ton of questions and we still have a lot to go through so we’re going to keep rolling. You guys, anybody want to comment on that? Or was that good enough?

Hernan: I think you nailed it, Bradley. Whatever I would say is just repeating what you were saying.

Ranking A Video In First Page For A Fairly Competitive Niche

Bradley: Jamie’s up, hey Jamie. She says, “Hi, I have a video in a fairly competitive niche that I can’t seem to push onto page one. It bounces between 11 and 14 and seems like the last push is the toughest. I have my link wheel, I’ve ordered embeds and links on SerpSpace, I’ve created some YouTube link wheels with about 300 YouTube links to the video. I’ve run some PBNs and web twos to the video. By the way I have keyword optimized both the video and the channel. I have crowdsearch running seven views per month to it. Any thoughts on what else I can do to push it over the top? Thanks.”

Okay, number one for videos, you can go a lot more aggressive with views if you’re using CrowdSearch. Second of all, I would set up some referral traffic campaigns using crowdsearch to the video, particularly through a GOO.GL short link so that you can inject analytics into that link stream, which is what I talked about earlier in this Hump Day Hangout. Okay, the other thing is remember Jamie, there are just some keyword phrases that Google will damn near refuse to rank a video for on page one. That is the case guys, it didn’t used to be but it is the case now. There are categories of searches now and there are certain search phrases that are just not friendly to videos because it doesn’t make sense. Now, I don’t know that that’s the case with you, Jamie, but it sounds like it because … Usually when you have a video that you can get, that bounces between like 11 and 14, and I’ve seen that happen myself many, many times, it’s because it’s one of those keyword phrases that Google just doesn’t want to put a video on page one.

A lot of times, for example real estate terms, a lot of real estate lead gen terms, not for house listings but for like realtors in cities and stuff like that, or real estate agent plus city name and stuff like that, those are really tough terms to rank videos for and I’ve fought tooth and nail to get them to rank on page one before and typically once I get them to page one, they don’t stick anyways. They’ll bounce right back after just a few days to page two, no matter what. I’ve learned to just not target those types of keywords when I have that much of a difficulty ranking it, then I look for other variations of the keyword that I can rank. Okay?

Marco: I would also ask her, has she ever just left it alone? Has she ever just let it sit, because it seems like she’s been doing a whole bunch of stuff to it. Has she ever just let it sit for, I don’t know, six, eight weeks and see what happens?

Bradley: [inaudible 00:49:45] search views and the other thing, Jamie, you can do is set up some YouTube ads. Set up an AdWords campaign, give it a dollar a day budget, that’s 30 bucks a month. Or $2 a day, 60 bucks a month, right? Set up a video ad campaign because that oftentimes will give that last push that it needs to get to page one. I’ve experience that many, many times over the last two years. That’s kind of like one of the tricks I keep up my sleeve for whenever SEO just isn’t working for a particular video, is you set up, and I talked about this I think last Hump Day Hangout, because Brian Lichtig, I remember he had the question specifically about that.

If it’s local, I don’t know that it’s local, but if it is local, you can set up targeting with the geographic location targeting to where you don’t even have to get keyword specific on it because all you’re looking to do is get clicks to the video from local IPs. You can set up a very broad targeting campaign that’s just mainly targeted by geographic location. For example, you can use affinity audience targeting or topic targeting, you don’t even need to use keyword targeting. Just use topic or affinity audience targeting and set up a local campaign, set the geographic location, if it’s a local video, which I’m assuming it is but maybe it’s not. If it’s a national thing, well then I would still set by country. Target US but then I would go a little bit more narrow in my other targeting options. But for local, go broad in your audience targeting, but specific in your geographic targeting and just start getting local IP clicks to that video. It’s going to make a huge difference.

That’s something that you can’t really do with CrowdSearch. You can to a point, but not like you can when you’re paying Google. Remember, when you’re paying AdWords, when you’re using YouTube ads, you’re paying Google for engagement. Right? You’re paying Google for engagement signals and they’ll provide them to you. We got one more and then we’ll have to wrap it up.

Hernan: [inaudible 00:51:44] real quick, I don’t know if you have even tested Video Powerhouse, Jamie, for your video? If you haven’t and you’re interested in testing it, just write us a support ticket because maybe we can make a case study of sorts and we can get you sorted out with Video Powerhouse. This would actually be a good case study so just write us to support.[inaudible 00:52:11].com. Just hit us up and maybe we can help you with Video Powerhouse and turning this into a potential case study if that’s something that you wanted to do.

Issues Connecting Google Plus Pages In Buffer

Bradley: Yeah. Okay, Lori’s up and then we got to wrap it up guys. The IFTTT SEO update webinar starts in about eight minutes so this will be the last one. Lori says, “Happy New Year to everyone! I’m creating a tier one branded ring for a new client. When I set up the YouTube Channel, it let me choose ‘Use Business or Other Name’ to create a G+ Page. However, when I set up a Buffer account and tried to connect that page, it said there wasn’t one, but ‘Click Here to Create One’. I did that but now when I click ‘My Accounts’, it shows that I have two branded pages. Any thoughts? Is it bad to have two branded pages? If so, which one should I link other accounts to? I’m using a persona name behind the accounts, but using the business brand for logo, cover pics, et cetera.”

Well Lori, what I would do, I’m not sure why Buffer gave you an issue. Sometimes when that kind of stuff happens it can be like a cache issue with your browser. I know that sounds weird but oftentimes some weird shit can happen with that. In that case, maybe I would have tried to close that browser down, run CCleaner, clear cache and cookies, all of that and then open the browser, log back in to Buffer and that Google account and try a second time. I know that’s past where you’re at now anyways, but what I’m saying is that’s what I would have done initially instead of creating and new page when you had already created a page. Right? Because now you’ve got two pages.

Yeah, I would delete one of those pages, which you can do as the page owner. You can go into the settings and if you scroll all the way down to the bottom it’ll say, “Delete page,” and I would delete the duplicate page. Keep the one that is connected to Buffer already, unless you’ve already got your IFTTT network built in and the other page has already been connected throughout a lot of those properties, in which case I would delete the one that Buffer created and then I would try again because I just connected a Google+ page to a Buffer account today in fact, because I was preparing for the IFTTT SEO update webinar.

I don’t know why, it was probably just some weird browser cache issue. I would have closed out, cleared cache and cookies, and tried again and then like I said, I would delete the page that was created through that process and keep the one that you had already created that should probably already be interlinked to all the other properties. Otherwise, you’re going to have to go back and edit all those other properties. But again, just go through, find which one is the duplicate and then go to the settings as the page owner, go to the settings, scroll all the way down to the bottom and there’ll be a “Delete page” button. Okay?

Okay guys, sorry we didn’t get to all the questions. Look at that, awesome. Sorry guys, apparently we had a lot of questions today. Everybody’s looking to get busy in 2017 apparently. I’m glad everybody’s here. IFTTT SEO update webinar starts in about five minutes. We will see you guys then, otherwise we’ll see you next week. Thanks everyone.

Hernan: Bye bye guys.

Marco: Bye everybody.

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