Jon Say's Blog, page 6

Follow-Up Friday: Are the Posters Still Posted?

Today was the day I went back to Marquette and UW-Milwaukee to see how many of the Faye posters I'd put up one week ago were still hanging.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  I figured if all of the posters had been taken down, it meant one of two things.  Either the image on the poster was too risque for public posting and this advertising channel wasn't going to be effective, or else the public posting boards were cleared every weekend and re-posting earlier in the week would be necessary to have a decent chance of students noticing the poster and acting on it.

My first stop at Marquette was the student union, where I'd put up three posters last Friday.  My heart sort of sunk when I discovered that all three had been taken down.  Then I felt somewhat better when I noticed that two of them were on boards that clearly stated "These boards are cleaned every week."  OK, that explains those.  The third one, however, had been in the student coffee shop where no such notice existed.  I decided to put one poster up on the board that said it was cleared every week, and leave the coffee shop alone for now.

My tour of the rest of the campus revealed that all of the Faye posters at Marquette had been removed with the exception of one – in the Physics building.  I wound up replacing the posters in the Health Sciences, Language, and Journalism buildings, and decided that I would stop by on Monday afternoon to see if any of those five posters was still there.  If not, I'll just explore a possible student newspaper ad and let it be.  If the posters are still up, I'll put up some more as well, and still explore the student newspaper ad.

I then went to UWM.  My first stop was the 8th Note coffee shop in the Student Union, and I was stoked to see the Faye poster was still up!  Awesome!  I then went to Bolton Hall, and the two posters I'd put up one week earlier were also still there!  Three for three!  The next stop was the Lubar Business Building.  No poster.  Curtin Writing Building.  No poster.  Pearse Communication Building – poster still there!  Urban Planning – neither of the two posters were up.  Lapham Geosciences.  No poster.  Chemistry Building – still there!  Engineering.  Gone.

So the final tally was:  MU: 1 of 10 posters still up = 10%.  UWM: 5 of 11 = 45%.

OK, so the posters at UWM survived better than at MU.  Why?  Public university versus private university?  Non-Jesuit school versus Jesuit school?  Primarily commuter school versus primarily non-commuter school?  Luck?

The answer is probably some of each.  I still believe the posters are an important element of the PR strategy for Flesh Wound at the college campus level.  Here's what I'm going to do.

On Monday, I'll swing through MU and UWM again to see if there is a 'weekend sweep' of the boards where the posters had been taken down.  If they are gone, I'll repost them.  I will call the student newspapers and find out about advertising rates, and follow up with ads if possible.  I will put more info in the ad than is on the poster, but not much.  Probably something to let people know FW is a book and the site contains a blog.

Next Tuesday, I'll go up to UW-Oshkosh and do an initial posting.  On Wednesday, I'll revisit Whitewater and perhaps Madison and see how those posters have fared.  I'll also inquire as to advertising rates in the student newspapers there.

The other measure of effectiveness for the poster campaign is the number of hits to the FWTB website.  Since I started putting up posters, that site has had 30 hits.  Not huge.  Not zero.  I think it is too early to conclude anything about the effectiveness of the posters.  But 30 is where we stand right now.  There have been 2 new user registrations on the site, which is a third measure of overall interest.  I'm not concerned yet, it's still early days.

This sort of PR is fun for me, and I'm going to stay with it for now.  Christmas, amazingly, is six weeks away.  I think Flesh Wound would make an excellent gift for the open-minded, interesting adults on your list!    Read something today that makes you nervous.  Have a terrific weekend, and thanks for reading!  -Jon

A Visit to UW-Whitewater

After Monday's visit to the behemoth campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I spent yesterday at the much smaller but very well-appointed campus at UW-Whitewater.  Located about 50 miles west of Milwaukee in the gently rolling farmland of central Wisconsin, over 11,000 students were enjoying the freakish 70 degree, sunny weather in mid-November.

I liked this campus right away.  I don't know if it just seemed like the right size, or there was a sense of fewer distractions than at Madison, but I felt comfortable there immediately and thought it would be a good fit for Faye and Max.  I wound up putting up eight posters around campus at the following locations:

-Hyland Hall (Business Building – 3)

-Upham Hall (Physics)

-University Center (The Union)

-Drumlin Hall (Student dining hall)

-McGraw Hall (PC lab)

-Greenhill Center for the Arts

I was happy with the locations and the posters will get a lot of eyeballs walking past them every day.  Hopefully, I'll see the number of hits to the FleshWoundTheBook.com/wordpress site go up this week!

So what is next?  Today and tomorrow I'm staying close to home to take care of some family-related things, plus call the student newspapers at the four schools I've visited thus far to find out advertising rates.  It would be good to follow up the posters with an ad in the paper to reinforce the message.  Friday, I'll be revisiting Marquette and UW-Milwaukee to see how many of the posters I put up made it through one week.  Then next Monday, I'll visit the UW campus at Oshkosh and perhaps Green Bay.

So right now the writing life doesn't include much writing, mostly just PR.  But I do get to write this blog, and I'm going to start blogging at the Flesh Wound site as well.  I had some interesting thoughts come to me as I was touring the campuses, and I think Faye will have some comments on them that will make a good blog post.

I hope your week is going as well as mine!  Read something today that surprises you.  Thanks for reading!  -Jon

Faye Posters up at UW-Madison

After getting Faye posters up at Marquette and UW-Milwaukee last Friday, I turned my focus west today and drove the 75 miles to Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin.  It was gorgeous and unseasonably warm – 65 degrees – for November.

Let me just say right off the bat that the Wisconsin campus at Madison is absolutely gorgeous.  It is way past Fall color, but with the gently sloping Bascom Hill dotted with students soaking up the November sunshine, Lake Mendota sparkling blue in the distance, and the energy of a 50,000 student university, I can understand why attending college there inspires such profound loyalty in the alumni.

The campus is also huge.  It is long and narrow, and is easily a couple of miles from one end to the other.  I started at the east end, at the Campus Information Center, where I got a very good campus map.  I was a bit overwhelmed as I sat in the Memorial Union looking at it.  I had about 2 1/2 hours before I had to return to Milwaukee to pick up my daughter from school.

I decided to strike out for the Business School, and as I was walking the two blocks there, I checked my watch and saw it was 10 minutes before the hour.  That meant it was time for the change of classes.  Right on cue, students began pouring out of surrounding buildings and soon the sidewalks had gone from nearly empty to resembling the foot traffic of midtown Manhattan.  It really drove home the reality of what a 50,000 student population looks like.

I found that the pattern of finding public posting bulletin boards in most University buildings held true, and after walking around campus for my allotted 2 1/2 hours, I managed to place a total of ten posters of Faye in the following places:

-Vilas Communications Building (2)

-Humanities Building

-Law Building

-Bascom Mall

-Business Building

-Chemistry Building

-Physics Building

-Statistics Building (yes, there is an entire building dedicated to Statistics)

-Van Vleck Building

That's a total of 10 posters.  I covered only around 1/4 of the campus.  Obviously, return visits will be necessary.  The upside, though, is that because there are so many students, even that 1/4 campus coverage will result in a lot of people seeing the posters.  So hopefully, the poster will be compelling enough to cause visits to the FleshWoundTheBook.com/wordpress site.

Tomorrow, I plan to go to a smaller UW school, at Whitewater.  I'm curious to see how the campus strikes me now that I've been to the main campus at Madison!  And, I'm hoping to see website traffic spike at the FW site.

Later this week, I'll be contacting the campus newspapers at all the schools I've visited to see what advertising rates are, and I'll be going back to Marquette and UW-Milwaukee to see how the posters I placed there last Friday are faring.

Have a spectacular day!  Read something today that makes you laugh out loud!  Thanks for reading.  -Jon

The First Posters of Faye Are Up!

Final Faye Poster

Today was a big day for the new PR plan for Flesh Wound!  Today, I went to two major universities in town and hung up the poster that announces the new website dedicated to Flesh Wound.  First I'll tell you about the poster, and then I'll tell you about posting it.

The image to the left, obviously, is the poster.  It is designed very simply.  There is an eye-catching image of a woman wearing a latex miniskirt and red corset, which is intended to represent Faye and the work she does in Flesh Wound.  Then there is a simple phrase above the image – Do You Know Faye? – and the URL for the Flesh Wound website below the image.  A simple black border focuses the viewer's eye to the image and words, and creates a space for the message on the poster that is separate from anything else that might be hung around the same area.

The design of the poster is intentionally clean and simple.  I knew that these posters would be placed in areas of high foot traffic, and I figured that at the most, I would be able to have the viewer's attention for maybe 1 or 2 seconds.  That's it.  In that time, the poster had to capture their attention and deliver a message compelling enough for them to take some sort of action.  With luck, the image would make the viewer stop and look more closely at the poster, but I couldn't bank on that.  So I chose an eye-catching image tied in with the theme of the book, hoping to make the viewer look twice.  The phrase – Do You Know Faye? – is first and foremost brief.  You can read that in 1 second or less, and with boldface type you can be some distance from the poster and still read it.  The fact that it is a question will trigger people's automatic response to consider it and hopefully spark their curiosity.  Is this someone they know?  What is this poster about?  The URL underneath the picture is long, but I used a larger font on the book title than the other part of the URL, and capitalized the letters of each word.  I also decided to keep the '/wordpress' at the end because most viewers on college campuses will know that means this is a blog.

My hope is that lots of students see the poster and check out the URL.  If I can get them to the site, the site ought to do the rest to spark their interest in the book.

Then this morning, armed with fifty copies of the poster, I drove to Marquette University.  MU is my undergraduate alma mater, and a Jesuit university.  I am not certain how that fact will affect how the poster is received, but given the fact that MU is full of 18 to 22 year old adults, I was ready to assume a certain level of open-mindedness.

I bundled up because it was cold and windy today – 36 degrees with a brisk wind, making it feel like 26 outside.  My first stop was the Union, a central gathering place for students of all courses of study.  I was able to put up three posters there; one in a coffee house designed for studying, and two others in high traffic entrance points.  I was surprisingly nervous!  When I put up the poster in the coffee shop there were at least a dozen students who could see me do it, but I didn't feel like I attracted much attention.  The other posting areas were on bulletin boards directly above an area full of deeply cushioned armchairs.  I basically had to stand next to two coeds while I posted one of them, and lean over a sweatshirted student punching away at a laptop keyboard while another dozed in a chair a few feet away to post the third.  Once the posters were up I felt good about how they looked, though, and then I set off to find the bulletin boards in other buildings on campus.

All told, I posted ten posters on Marquette's campus in these buildings:

-Union (3)

-Health Sciences

-Physics

-Chemistry

-Languages

-Business

-Journalism

-Varsity Theater

After that, I drove a few miles to UW-Milwaukee, the other major university in town.  I'm not as familiar with the UWM campus, so it took me a while to orient myself.  I started with the Student Union, but although the space was enormous, modern, and well designed, it seemed like there was no place to post things.  So after wandering around for a bit, I spied a set of offices devoted to the local LBTG community (for those of you who don't know, that acronym stands for Lesbian Bisexual and Trans-Gender) on campus.  I asked the very kind, helpful person there about posting things and he told me that the Union controlled postings very closely, but there were public bulletin boards in most of the other buildings on campus.

Before leaving the Union, I did find a local coffeehouse – 8th Note – and they did have a bulletin board there.  So I did put up a Faye poster, under the watchful gaze of a half dozen students playing cards.  Then I left and walked the campus in the freezing cold, putting posters in the following buildings on campus:

-Bolton Hall (2)

-Lubar Business Building

-Curtin Hall

-Pearse Hall

-Architecture and Urban Planning Building (2)

-Lapham Geosciences

-Chemistry

-Engineering

Then it was time to come home and pick up my daughter from school.  The final tally for the day was 21 posters placed, 10 at Marquette and 11 at UWM.  My next step will be to go back to these campuses on Monday and see that the posters are still in place.  I'm curious about that.  I don't know if the image is too provocative for those environments, but I don't think it is.  I'll also be interested to see if the web traffic on the Flesh Wound site spikes.

So I'm stoked, and it was a big day!  I'll let you know what I find on Monday!  In the meantime, have a terrific weekend and read something that transports you to some other place!  Thanks for reading.  -Jon

New Website Ready For Launch!

Final Cover for Flesh Wound

It's been a very productive two days, and the new website dedicated to Flesh Wound is ready to launch.  It's going to be a lot of fun!  There are five pages; the blog, a page for Flesh Wound; a page for Faye, a page for Max, and a page with contact info for me.  You can preview the site at:

http://FleshWoundTheBook.com/wordpress

Individual e-mail boxes have been created for Faye and Max, and those are in the process of being setup by GoDaddy.  The addresses are:

Faye@FleshWoundTheBook.com

Max@FleshWoundTheBook.com

There is also an email for me there:

Jon@FleshWoundTheBook.com

I encourage you to visit the site, read the Q&As with Faye and Max, and leave comments, questions, or emails.  I guarantee that Faye and Max will personally answer all of them.  :)

The next step in the PR launch for Flesh Wound is finishing the poster.  The poster is 90% complete, and I'll finish it tomorrow.  Then it is off to find the printer, get it run, and with luck I'll have it posted by the end of next week.  Then, the fun will start!

I hope you're having a great week!  Read something today that makes you think of a childhood memory!  Thanks for reading.  -Jon

How to Get 1,000+ Website Hits Overnight

My last blog post talked about passing through the O'Hare Hilton on a visit to my brother-in-law last Friday, how it always reminds me of O.J. Simpson, and the irony of all of this happening on Halloween weekend – spooky!

After posting that blog entry, I did what I always do.  I put a Facebook status update out saying the latest blog was up, and then went to Twitter (JonSayAuthor) and tweeted that the blog was up.  In fact, here is my exact tweet:

I had a different kind of spooky start (re: O.J. Simpson!) to the Halloween weekend. Check it out in today's blog… http://jonsay.com

Prior to this post, the website was having a slow-ish week with 902 hits.  The site had been averaging closer to 1,400 per week recently, and as it was already Friday, I figured this week would fall a bit short of that.  What I didn't count on was this:  I included the magical words "O.J. Simpson" in my tweet.

I tweeted this late Friday afternoon.  On Saturday morning, I checked the website stats and the number of hits for the week had rocketed to 2,215.  That's right – 2,215!  That means that overnight, jonsay.com received 1,313 hits; an average week's worth of activity in about 12 hours!

OK, why do you suppose that happened?  My guess is the keyword "O.J. Simpson" triggered a bunch of people to check out the post.  I have no other explanation.  Further, I only have about 60 followers on Twitter, so all the hits didn't come from those folks!  Who knows?  Maybe there are search engines out there programmed to find "O.J. Simpson" references and the hits came from those people.

Let's not even talk about how eerie it is that the number of overnight hits was 1313.  (Key spooky music…)

So my advice to you, if you write a blog or have a website that you want people to visit, is to include "O.J. Simpson" somewhere on the site and see what happens.  If that is what drove the activity on my site, I remain astonished at the buzz O.J. is still creating among the masses.  Amazing.

Now that it's November, I'm back to creating the site dedicated to Flesh Wound.  I finished the Q&A with Faye that will be part of her page on the site, and I have to say it was a pleasure talking with her again.    Next up is Max' Q&A, and finding a suitable photo to use on his page.  But I've got some ideas.  Then, create an email address for both of them so their fans can communicate directly with them.  The site should be finished by the end of this week at the latest.

Have a great day!  Read something today that makes you wonder.  Thanks for reading! -Jon

A Different Kind Of Spooky for Halloween Weekend

Got a late start on the blog today, but for good reason.  My wife's brother was flying across country on the redeye from San Francisco to Boston, and had a three hour layover in Chicago.  That's close enough for us to come down and steal a rare visit with him, so at 3:00 this morning, we all piled into the car and drove the 80 miles or so to O'Hare, arriving there at 5:00 AM.

There is something almost reverent about being on the road at that hour of the morning, flying down a nearly deserted four-lane highway in the dark through the third largest city in the country.  The other traffic was almost entirely big rigs carting clothes, toys, vegetables, household appliances, and all the other things we simply assume just appear on the well-stocked shelves of all the stores we go into every day.  Most of the vast population of the city sleeps at that hour; driving through it without the usual gridlock feels like you are tiptoeing quietly past a sleeping lion, able to appreciate its silent fierce beauty.

Chicago O'Hare Hilton at Sunrise

We successfully met up with the brother, had a splendid visit, and saw him off to the correct security checkpoint in the right terminal at O'Hare.  Then we walked out into the breaking dawn, and were met with another sight of mixed beauty and suggested fierceness – the O'Hare Hilton.  (See picture at left).

Did that seem a little dramatic?  The O'Hare Hilton always will strike me that way, ever since it gained notoriety as the place O.J. Simpson flew to immediately after leaving Los Angeles the night his wife was brutally murdered.  It means something more once you've lived in Los Angeles for any length of time, and seen the changes that took place in the Brentwood neighborhood after that tragedy, and the rapt, panting attention the nation paid to the legal proceedings which followed.  When I see the curving roof of the hotel against a Chicago sky filled with approaching planes, I always wonder what it must have been like for O.J. to sit on that four-hour flight, landing in so different a place than Los Angeles, perhaps knowing what had come so recently before.  And then of course, to be detained by law enforcement officials, put right back on a plane, and flying four-hours back to Los Angeles.

Can't help it.  That's just what the O'Hare Hilton will always trigger in me.

The rest of the day was gorgeous, a day of rest spent with my family having a great time on a beautiful, sunny Fall day, unable to imagine my life without them.  Life is something, isn't it?  Have a terrific Halloween weekend!  Read something today that scares the pants off of you!    Thanks for reading.  -Jon

What Would You Ask Faye?

If you've read Flesh Wound, you know that Faye leads an unusual life.  Things have happened in her past that are not unusual, but profound nonetheless – an early marriage that ended in divorce; the death of her sister and brother-in-law in a tragic accident; adopting her now orphaned niece as a single parent.  Faye's response to the seemingly random acts of fate that can happen in life has been to dive deeply into what she believes and realize that she has the power to make choices there.  If she chooses to live by the general beliefs espoused by society or the specific beliefs of others close to her without questioning if she agrees with them, then she is forfeiting one of the most powerful actions she can take as a human being.

Her journey into self-scrutiny led to some surprising conclusions, a set of beliefs that resonates with her soul, and a most uncommon pursuit.  She creates a place where individuals can express their deepest desires in a safe, controlled environment, and feel the fulfillment of the most intimate connection with another human being.  In short, she provides a meaningful emotional experience to people who would otherwise go without.  For this, she is rewarded with seeing the layers of protection and defense people use to shield themselves from the world fall way and watch people in their most vulnerable, childlike, and emotionally fulfilled states.  She watches them come into the emotional balance needed to function positively in the world.  For some, Faye becomes the most important emotional connection in their lives.

Most people don't do a deep enough dive within themselves to make conscious choices about what they believe and how they are going to live their lives.  Those that do are often prodded into it by a traumatic event that forces them to take that step to cope, to avoid slipping into the numbing oblivion of an addiction or other destructive behavior.

If you had a chance to sit down and have lunch with Faye, what would you ask her?  Well, you and anyone else who runs across the new Flesh Wound website will soon have that chance (not the lunch, the questions. ).  The development of the new website for Flesh Wound is in full swing, and it will feature a blog written alternately by Faye, Max, and Jon Say.  Faye, Max, and Jon will also have their own email addresses where questions can be sent, and every one will be answered directly.  Readers can also leave comments and questions on the blog, and Faye, Max, and Jon will answer them there for everyone to see.  Faye and Max will have their own pages on the site that have a bio and a Q&A so readers can get to know them better.

This new site will be live in a couple of weeks, and will be followed by the media campaign on college campuses for Flesh Wound.  Stay tuned, this is fun!  In the meantime, work hard on your Halloween costumes.  Thanks for reading! -Jon

A Quick Look Back at the Past; A Longer Look Forward to the Future

I hope you had a great weekend!  I had lunch on Saturday with a couple of ex-colleagues who are good friends, and it was great.  I got a chance to sign their books and talk with them about their reactions to Flesh Wound, which was great fun for me.  It was also terrific to see them outside of the work environment we'd shared.  They have both moved on to other organizations and in both cases, it is turning out to be a very positive step.  It's good to see good people move forward successfully!

Another plus that came from the lunch was talking about how the environment at the organization I'd left has not improved at all in the last 16 months.  It felt like another confirmation to me that writing full-time is the right decision.  Not that I'd been dreaming about returning to the banking career track, but until I can support my family the way I'd like to with writing, the spectre (sorry about that spelling, I went sort of "Man From U.N.C.L.E". on you there, lol) of a steady paycheck will always get my attention.  Just hearing about the latest anecdotes from my former work environment made me want to go home and hug my wife and say, "We decided to do the right thing!"

I spent most of today on campus at one of the universities that I plan to target for a Flesh Wound media blitz.  The next thing in my PR plan is to create the website for Flesh Wound, and I decided to design the pages on paper first at the Library of the university.  I walked into several of the other buildings on campus as well, scouting out locations to hang the poster of Faye once it is complete.  I found several locations that will work excellently!  I also picked up a copy of the student newspaper, and after looking through it I am convinced that running an ad there will work, lend credibility to the posters, and help establish the Flesh Wound brand with the students.  It also occurred to me that I can blitz more than one university at a time.  That may be the best way to launch Flesh Wound to this market.

One trade-off of pursuing this PR strategy with Flesh Wound is that it puts the writing of Rubbed Out on the back burner.  I'm not crazy about that; but I am convinced it is the right way to go right now.  I can't wait to get back to writing that story, though.

Have a terrific day!  Read something today that teaches you something you didn't already know!  Thanks for reading.  -Jon

Poster Image, Domain Name Purchased

The last couple of days were good ones!  According to the PR plan for Flesh Wound, I ought to have a start on the poster design that will wind up on college campuses where book club readings or author signings for Flesh Wound are scheduled.  Because things are moving more quickly than I'd planned right now, I've been able to do the following:

Purchase the image I want to use on the poster.  I also purchased unlimited rights to use the image in print media without limits on geography.  The site I purchased the image from is called Fotolia.com.  It is a picture of a girl in a red corset and black latex miniskirt, back to the camera, hands on her bottom.  It ought to be sufficiently eye-catching.  :)  The image and unlimited use rights cost $12.00.
Design a first draft of the poster.  It includes the image and a tagline below it, with a call to action to visit the website dedicated to Flesh Wound.  I worked with my wife on coming up with the design, and then bounced it off a very good friend of mine who runs the Marketing department of a successful multi-billion dollar organization.   She made some excellent suggestions, and I think the poster is now 90% finished.
I also went to GoDaddy.com and bought the domain name for Flesh Wound.  The actual URL "fleshwound.com" was already taken, and I checked it out to see what sort of site it was.  Turns out it is a chiropractic or physical therapy sort of thing.  Definitely not competition for my book , which is good.  I settled instead for "FleshWoundTheBook.com", which was available.

So I'm actually several days ahead of schedule right now.  Here's what I'm going to do next week:

Design FleshWoundTheBook.com:  Now that I've secured the domain name, the next step there will be to design the site.  I'm going to use WordPress to do that because it worked so well for this site, and also I plan on having a blog on the new site, so WordPress seems ideal.
Finalize the poster.  I'm not going to go to production with it, however, until the new website is complete.  I don't want someone seeing the poster, going to the new website, and having it not be ready yet.
Start to research book clubs at local universities and colleges.

The PR plan I wrote is helpful in many ways.  It is the first thing I consult in the morning when I sit down to work.  It helps keep me organized, on the right track, and prevents me from forgetting steps and ideas that I've jotted down as they occur to me.  Next week ought to be very productive.

Have a terrific late October weekend!  Read something that teaches you something you didn't already know!  -Jon