John Raymond » Web Site Design Projects

Whoa! – an internet experiment

John Raymond — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:33:06 +0000

I was browsing status’ on facebook yesterday and saw a really funny response to a status. The status said “I’ll have to take down my Rocky Horror pics because my dad is now on facebook.” The response was simply a link to http://www.sadtrombone.com. Upon clicking on the link and playing the trumpet sound, I erupted in laughter. My dog was a bit frightened and disturbed at my outrageous laugh but I was inspired.

Back in the day there was a show on NBC called Blossom. One of the character’s played by Joey Lawrence had this trademark saying “WHOA!” I immediately wanted this packaged and at my disposal like sad trumpet. After a few hours of research, photoshop design, flash work, and html coding I created http://www.joeywhoa.com. I didn’t want to spend too much time on the design but I wanted to have a little 90’s flare to it. So I used some old Saved by the Bell promo materials to inspire the logo and background. I also threw up an old school hit counter for fun. Check it out and make sure to follow up a outrageous, moronic, or ordinary tweet or fb status with a Joey Whoa.

Busy Busy

John Raymond — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:10:18 +0000

I’ve been so busy lately but I wanted to pass along an update. I had a pretty productive weekend and am working on building a number of web sites for myself. They are all experiments in SEO. Here’s a list of them:

http://www.couponland.org – formerly carlscoupondiscounts.com
http://www.athensohiohotels.net
http://www.progressivesflo.com
http://www.wordpresshosting1.com
Bowling Green Ohio Hotels

They are all in production so please don’t judge them too harshly. I’m showing them not only to you but also to google (so google will start indexing them). I’ll have more for you soon. Feel free to contact me with questions.

Facebook Marketing thoughts

John Raymond — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 20:21:44 +0000

Facebook Campaigns and Campaigns on Facebook are new ways to promote your Columbus Ohio business. If you don’t have a presence on facebook, I would encourage you to create one for your business. But John, what’s the most effective way to utilize facebook? That really depends on the type of business you are in. Let me address a few questions that you may have:

Why should I start one? Who should I befriend?

Treat facebook as another email list. As you build your following of friends, you can email them and update them on any happenings or events with your business or product.

By now some of your real life friends will be on facebook. Go ahead and befriend them and possibly befriend employees (depending upon if they feel comfortable) These people will help you build your companies friend list.

But what’s the best way to start? Should you create a facebook profile or a fan page?

This is a tough question to answer. In the summer of 2008, my intern Danny Cox and myself both debated this question when working on internet marketing strategies for athenshub.com. We decided to go with a profile. The reasoning is that it’s more likely that you will appear in a “news feed” section. Sure, when “fan” profiles make updates, you will see an “update” notice on the news feed page but that’s about it.

What kind of exposure did you get by creating a facebook profile?

We would appear on our friends news feed when we were invited and chose to attend people’s events. You can also show up by befriending other people, posting pictures, and posting a status. These are all great ways to create awareness of your company and increase your following of friends.

Another advantage of creating a profile rather than a fan page is that you can join groups. Research groups on facebook and identify which groups would contain your target audience. Athenshub.com is a free classfieds site and in the Summer of 2008 we were targeting students looking for rentals for the 2009-2010 school year. We wanted to show students that we were a resource to find information on rentals. We did some research on groups and found groups of students that would be looking for rentals. We then joined the group and then emalied the group administrator and asked that they would pass along a message to the group (1000 + members) that the website was a resource for them.

This strategy paid off huge dividends as these admins passed along word to group members via facebook email. We saw large spikes in traffic both on the days the email went out and in days going forward. And there’s nothing better than having the group admin market for you.

These are a few tips to get you started. We plan on doing some more great interactive things with athens hub and for my new coupon website. Happy facebooking!

Fridays Live Commercial Parody – Fharmony

John Raymond — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:21:57 +0000

A goal of mine for grad school was to challenge myself as much as I could on all levels. I participated in a student produced sketch comedy show called Fridays Live. I wrote sketches, helped with their e-marketing campaign, helped get sponsorship for the show and also did a little acting.

This is one of my favorite commercials from the show that I was in. It’s for Fharmony and parody’s those e-harmony commercials.

2007 Playhouse Square Broadway Series Viral Video Contest0

John Raymond — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:53:00 +0000

This is another commercial that I wrote and directed for Playhouse Square. It was to help promote their 2007 Broadway Series website. More details on the contest to come.

Speak Up Classes At Playhouse Square

John Raymond — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:41:06 +0000

The Education Department at Playhouse Square asked me to come up and produce a commercial to promote their lunch-time “Speak Up Classes.” These classes help working professionals with public speaking. They wanted something outside the box and funny. So we shot this in the winter of 2007.

Playhouse Square Spamalot Viral Video Contest

John Raymond — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:30:15 +0000

In the fall of 2006, I was charged with coming up with some kind of interactive contest to target a “younger audience.” The typical target audience for Playhouse Square is women age 60-65. We felt that Spamalot was a great show to test out this sort of contest.

After doing some research, I came up with a Viral Video Contest. This was a relatively new thing at the time. I carefully studied some of the successful campaigns and broke down the elements that got the campaign off the ground. With no budget, I had to get creative and wrote and starred in an edgy viral video to help promote the contest.

We launched a mini-site (which I designed and constructed) along with the video. The video got over 1000 views in the first four days of launch. We utilized html email blasts, myspace and facebook to help promote the contest.

The contest lasted a month and got 5 submissions. Here’s an archive page that contains some of the submissions from the contest: http://www.playhousesquare.us/spamvideocontest/.

Playhouse Square’s upper management saw the potential in the work we had done with no budget. The non-profit organization committed over $5,000 for a high end digital video camera and an internship to help us continue to do more of these types of videos.

fundjohnsmasters.com – Website Design and e-marketing

John Raymond — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 03:11:27 +0000

I was accepted into the Graduate program at Ohio University in 2007. I decided to pursue an M.A. in Interactive Multimedia. The cost of college was going to be expensive. So I created a Web site where people could sponsor the homepage for a fee and I would put the proceeds toward my masters. While I was not able to raise funds beyond the costs of the web site, this was a great exercise in learning about internet marketing. I was able to get traffic to the web site initially, however, I could not sustain it. Ultimately, this drove me to learn more about search engine optimization.

Student Legal Services Web Site Design

John Raymond — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:59:20 +0000

The Center for Student Legal Services at Ohio University chose me to redesign their Web site in the Winter of 2007. I worked with them to come up with a design that would reflect the marketing strategy and goals of the firm. Having updated content on their Web site was critical to the firm’s strategy. Understanding that I implemented a content management system that enabled the staff to easily log in and update the site on a regular basis. I also helped them set up google analytics and showed them how people were getting to their website.

The redesign has helped the Center spread the word to students to sign up for their services. In the future, they look to expand the website.

Web Site Strategy – Soul of Athens

John Raymond — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 02:49:04 +0000

The Soul of Athens 2008 Web site was a special project completed by students in the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University. The project was started and completed in a span of three months during Spring of 2008.

My role was to coordinate the marketing strategy of the site and help with other small aspects such as the construction of the youtube.com video player. Please check out the Web Site. It’s a truly amazing piece of work and the stories, images, and videos on the site are excellent.