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CopyDoodles December Update

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I want to welcome everybody to the December 2012 CopyDoodles Power U Training Webinar. If this is the first time you’re joining me, these are very quick webinars. It’ll be over before you know it, but the point of that is it’s a real quick shot of information and techniques, and it also gives anybody who wants to raise a question the opportunity to pose a question to me live, and I’ll do my best to answer that. That’s the purpose of these webinars – quick, quick tutorial on something CopyDoodles specific, and the opportunity for you guys, if you’d like to ask me a question, or a couple of questions, if you would like.

I also want to let everybody know the December DoodleDigest is available, and you should have all gotten that link, or log in and grab it from the CopyDoodles Access Club.

What I thought I would do this month, as I was thinking about this, you know it’s kind of the time of year where you start – I have Christmas music playing all the time now, I’ve always enjoyed Christmas music, so I have Pandora on my computer and I just play Christmas music. It’s the kind of time of year where I’m working hard, but I also realize, like here on the East Coast, and I know there’s a couple of us here on this webinar, it’s 60-some odd degrees today, it’s ridiculous. Last week at this time it was snowing, and now it’s 60 degrees.

So, you want to lighten up, so I thought rather than an in-depth training this month, what I thought I would do is show you some of the new content that we have just uploaded for you. And then, specifically, show you how you can use one of the new types of Doodles, which is brand new, and how you can have a little bit of fun with that here in the Christmas and holiday season.

The updates that we’re giving you this month, we’ve uploaded – and I’m going to show all of this here in a second – we’ve uploaded a bunch of new Christmas and holiday Text Doodles, a bunch of holiday and Christmas Shape CopyDoodles.

You may have caught wind recently of a new product that I just released called SimplePURLs. Well, as part of that product we created a unique set of PURL – by the way PURLs stand for personalized URLs, which are personalized hyperlinks that drive people to their own websites, unique to them. So, we created a bunch of  special PURL Doodles for our SimplePURLs subscribers, and I uploaded those to the CopyDoodles Access Club.

And this is very cool, I’m going to show you this, we have these brand new Overlay Doodles, we’ve never done that before. It was an experiment, and hopefully I’ll see some cool marketing from some of you, and we’ll show you how to use those.

And then we uploaded a bunch of Comics, the coffee-spill comics, and I’ll give some ideas on how you can use those.

Let’s get started here, I’m just going to jump right into the CopyDoodles Access Club. I’ve already logged in. Everyone should be aware of a couple of things right from the get-go. First of all, down here under ‘Announcements’ is where we post, for example, the latest DoodleDigest, which you can click on, you can get the latest comic guide right here. So, that’s just kind of an area where if you’re not familiar with it, you should be kind of looking there as you log in.

Now, the other area you want to look at is right here, ‘View Latest Content’. My goal is always to add good quality content as frequently as I can, typically it’s about once a month, or thereabouts. And this month I just want to show you all the good stuff that we have given you, just in time for your holiday marketing. I’m just going to kind of go through this.

The first thing you’ll see, and by the way, all of this is keyword searchable, so you can type in ‘Christmas,’ and ‘Hanukkah,’ or whatever it might be, and whatever Doodles are related will pop up.

But, these first ones might be kind of a little different looking, and they are, these colored ones here are our Overlay Doodles.

Now does anyone remember – I was thinking about this – this morning as I was thinking about this webinar – does anybody remember Colorforms? You know when you were a kid you may have had a toy called Colorforms, and they were these little adhesive things that you could stick on pictures of people, and you could put hats on them, and ears—yeah, so Debra remembers. Thank you, Debra. And, that’s what gave me this idea.

What you can do is download – let’s say we want to download Santa’s beard. And, I’m going to download that to a folder on my hard drive. And – oh, Mario still has these. You’re probably still playing with those too, Mario, right? Colorforms – they’re probably classic now. So, you can do these different ones here, and I think this one here – I think that’s Rudolph’s nose.

But, here’s what you can do with these, so I just downloaded a couple…

Now for those of you who are familiar with photo editing packages like Photoshop, or Paint, you can easily go into one of those photo image-type programs and start layering. But, what I did here is I’m just in Microsoft Word, and I just dropped a photo of me in there, and here’s one of the hat Photo Doodles, and I just resized it, you know, so it kind of fits my head, my big head, right?

Now, let’s look at these other ones that I just downloaded, and again, you always ‘Insert – Picture – From File,’ and there’s Santa’s beard. And like any Doodle, it comes in large, so you just have to resize it. You can just have a little bit of fun with that. And, I don’t take myself too seriously, so I have no problems doing this. So, we can do something like that… and what else can we do? We’ll put Rudolph’s nose on me too, how’s that? If my kids could only see me now.

Anyway, so you can see how you can have a little bit of fun with that, and – actually that looks like Santa’s nose that way. And, you could save that as a JPG, you could print it off, put it on a Christmas card, a holiday card, whatever it is that you guys are doing. But, the point is why not have a little bit of fun? We have these CopyDoodles, and now why not have a way of layering them on your own photos? I know there’s a few folks that will be able to use these, and hopefully everyone on this webinar can figure out a way to just have a little bit of fun in using the Photo Doodles.

Now, where can you find those? You go to ‘Special – Photo Overlays,’ and if this works out well, we’re going to add a lot more of these over time. But, you can see some of them there. They’ve already been colored for you, and there’s a snowman’s carrot nose and stuff. So, you can play with that and check those out.

Let’s go back, see what other goodies we have for you… and I’m just going through the latest content so you can see that. Now mind you, everyone should know this already, but you can always change the number of Doodles that display, so I just changed that.

Now these, if you notice, they’re the same Doodles, they’re just not colorized. So let me just click on one of these, this hat here. Now, these are a version where if you click on it – it will – it’s not colorized, but you can just make it colored like a regular Doodle. So, it’s just another way of getting that Doodle and downloading it and such, you can even put it on Facebook if you really desired, there. The other ones are colored and they’re meant to be used a little differently. These are just a regular CopyDoodle. And you can find those under ‘Shape – Holiday,’ you can see them all there.

Actually, there’s a lot more there that we’ve done, so look at all of these new Doodles we have. We have someone who’s doing some work for us, and she just does – matter of fact, I think she’s going a little overboard, they just – they look like works of art here. So, you can see all of the different hand-drawn sketches for Christmas, and Hanukkah, and such. Great for doing any kind of Christmas cards or Christmas marketing, or holiday marketing, so you can go right in there, ‘Shape – Holiday.’

What else do we have for you? We have a ton of Christmas, and Hanukkah, and holiday-type CopyDoodles that are phrases now, so they just kind of add to it. So, you should be familiar with how to use those, that shouldn’t be any too new. Where can you find those? Tish is our designer. You just go to ‘CopyDoodles – Text – Tish’ and you can see all – there’s probably close to 100 of them there. I think there’s about 70 words that she did, and you can see them all there.

Hopefully this will inspire you to do a little bit of holiday-themed marketing, if you hadn’t thought about that.

The other ones, if you’re interested in the PURL ones, they’re up under ‘Becky.’ The PURL ones are kind of unique, I’m not going to get into here, but if you’re a SimplePURLs customer I’m going to be doing another live webinar next week and showing you how to use all of this stuff. But, basically these are Doodles that you would put in an email, or in your direct mail, that kind of references the personalized component to the marketing, if you will. So, you can see some of those there.

And then we just added some Comics this month, a couple of comics. I do want to show them to you, because they’re pretty cool comics, actually. Here’s how you can use them – they’re coffee-spill comics. And my SmartIdeas subscribers got these, because we put a template together for them, but I like to leverage this.

And, they’re just comics of people – this is actually inspired by me spilling coffee on my desk earlier this year, and I created this template out of it. But, the comics are cool because what you guys could do is – let me just download that. I’m going to come back to my Word document here, and I’m going to drop that comic in there. So, you guys should be able to see that.

Now the neat thing about this comic is really it’s designed to be used one really strategic way, which is how I use it, I mean it can always be used another way too, but we left the caption off of it, but basically I like personalizing these with Mail Merge and such, but the idea behind this comic was that you’re sending it to somebody either in email or direct mail.

The idea behind it is because you are surprised, for any number of reasons, you could be surprised because you have not heard from them, it could be surprise because they finally became a customer – just something that shows surprise, or that emotion of excitement, even. “Oh, Mario became a customer of CopyDoodles, and I spilled my coffee when I saw the email come through.” The comic is just meant to reinforce that surprise or excitement over something, and the idea you would use the caption to show that. So, “Mario, I spilled my coffee when I saw you purchased CopyDoodles,” or something like that. I’m doing it in real time, but you get the idea there.

It’s just a comic that I’ve used several different ways over the course of time, and now I’m giving it to you. Actually, I had it on my hard drive and I forgot to upload it into CopyDoodles and wanted to do that, so that’s what those comics are for, and hopefully again, I’m trying to inspire you on this webinar how to use those comics. Where can you get those? You just go to ‘Comics – Access Comics,’ and there they are. We also did a couple of other new ones there that you can look at, and come up with captions.

That is this month’s Power U webinar. I told you they were quick. They’re meant to be about 15-20 minutes, but I want to leave a little bit of time here in case – I do see some people typing stuff in there. Let me come over here to the question box and see if any of them are anything other than making fun of my Santa nose, and if there’s any questions.

Kelly is asking, “Can you use the Overlay CopyDoodles on email?” Yes, Kelly, you can do that. I was in Word. If you wanted to use those Doodles online where you take your photo and add the hats or whatever, you would need some way of layering them, and then I believe even in Word it allows you to save as a JPG. You can see, Kelly, there is the graphic, it’s actually a web graphic. So, the answer is, yes, you can use these on emails or websites, you just need a way of layering the CopyDoodles on top of your photo. So, that could be either something as simple as Word, or Photoshop, or Paint, or some program if you’re a Macintosh there’s other – even PowerPoint could do it, OK? So hopefully that makes sense.

Debra is asking about Punchout Comics – well, that’s good, Debra. Debra’s asking – this is not really on topic, but thank you for taking advantage of this webinar to ask a smart question. She is asking about Punchout Comics. Punchout Comics are very similar almost, Debra, to these overlays.

Let me show you this, because I think this is something that is definitely under-utilized. If you go to ‘Special – Punchout Comics,’ these are comics that have a punchout, where you can add your own graphics. Let me show you how this works, and let me download this one first. I’m just downloading it to my hard drive, and I’m going to bring up Word for a second, Debra. Type in if there’s anything…

Alright, so there’s the comic. Now you can’t tell here, but if I were to colorize the background of this Word document, see how I punched out there, that screen is punched out, it’s actually – it’s a hole, it’s for the monitor. Now, what you’re supposed to do there is grab your own, in this case, screenshot of, say, your website.

Let’s do this, Debra, I’m going to do this in real time for you. And, what I’m going to do is I have a program that I love to use for screenshots, I’ve talked about it before, called SnagIt. So, I just took a screenshot. And, now what I’m going to do, Debra, is I’m going to copy that to my clipboard, and then I’m going to paste it. There is my screen – now, I’m doing this in real time, so it’s probably fraught with potential issues. But, I’m just trying to resize that graphic there. And, you really should not be doing this in Word, I’m doing it in Word only because I don’t want to bring up Photoshop and probably confuse people here. But, let me – because this is really not the program.

Let me bring up Publisher, Publisher is a little bit better for laying stuff out.

Again, you probably really want to use something like a photo editing package. But, let me just start a new one here.

There’s my screen shot that I just took, see how much easier I can maneuver this in Publisher? So there is my screenshot, I just took that in real time. And then here is my comic. What I would do, Debra, is I would bring – I would resize my screenshot, so it kind of fits in there – I’d stretch out, nothing fancy here. And then I would just change the order, so that’s in the back. And there is a Punchout Comic.

You see a comic with – that’s actually kind of cool, where the guy is pointing to himself, like a mirror.

So, does that answer your question? Or were you trying to do anything different?

I’ll to do a couple more real quick, since I have some time here. Another one I like – this is a neat one – the money one. So, download that, and bring up Publisher again. I’m going to delete those, and let’s see here. I’ve got to find a picture…

OK, so you did see what you were missing?

So, I’ll just do this very quickly and I’ll go on to the next question. But, since I’m here, let me just do this one more time. So, there’s a picture of me and now I’m going to drop in that other one that I just downloaded, which was the – I have two screens, so that’s why you’re seeing me kind of doing stuff in the background here. There’s a million dollar bill, and I’m doing this very quickly, but I could literally put my photo in there, and with a little bit of work, have my picture on a million dollar bill type of thing.

That’s the idea behind these Punchout Comics.

Alright. Good. I’m glad you were able to get that fixed, Debra.

Any other questions?

Adrian says she loves the photo Overlay Doodles – thank you very much – and she has some ideas, can she send them to us?

By the way, that’s a good point for everybody, we’re always open to ideas for content. If it makes sense for everybody, we’ll definitely do that and add it to the site. Last month we had, I don’t know if you recall, but last month I don’t remember where we even put them, but last month one of our members – there they are – Becky emailed us and said, “Mike, I need some explosion-type Doodles.” And, I thought, “Hey, that’s a good idea.” So, we created a bunch of – this was back in November, we did a bunch of explosion-type Doodles.

Adrian, absolutely. If you have ideas – here’s where you can send that, you can write this down, if you have any ideas for content, things you would like to see that have a universal appeal for all of our members, just send an email to us and we’ll take a look at that. A lot of times, like I said, all of these explosion Doodles last month came because of one of our members and I thought, “That’s a good idea, we need those in there.”

Matter of fact, believe it or not, these plus signs were from another member this month. She’s like, “Mike, you have no plus signs in there,” so we have a bunch of plus signs in there now. Alright?

I want to thank everybody. And, we’ll see you next month. Take care everybody!

Using CopyDoodles Vector versions

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This month I am going focus on CopyDoodles – vector versions, which is probably a topic most people aren’t aware of. But, in order for me to do that I need to take a step backward. So, CopyDoodles Access Club allows both non-designers and designers – so non-designers being 99 percent of our membership, folks that are running businesses that are marketing their businesses and they’re not a graphic design expert, but, allows everybody to create high quality hand-drawn doodles quickly and easily.

Now, before I describe the power of the vector-based CopyDoodles and what they can do for you, I want to take a quick step backwards and give you a quick overview of all the CopyDoodles formats, that way you’re familiar, in case you’re relatively new, you have a good foundation of what exactly the different formats do in the CopyDoodles Access Club.

The CopyDoodles Access Club allows you to generate basically three file formats – actually four file formats. And then as we discussed last month, you can also use them to generate Doodles for your Facebook posts.

This should look familiar here, where it says ‘Free Visit’, that is the download page for CopyDoodles, and you can colorize them. But, you can download CopyDoodles in print format, which are the PNG, the transparent background formats, you can generate JPGs and GIF files, which we typically say are for web and email marketing, and then again what we’re going to talk about primarily today are the vector-based Doodles, which are in EPS format, and I’ll talk about that in a moment.

But again, just for those of you who might not be real familiar with these different formats, PNG is typically the format I personally use probably 95 percent of the time. So, this is a very high-quality format, very realistic looking. It has a transparent background that allows you to layer CopyDoodles for any of your marketing, it could still be for online use, but typically for print marketing. So, we have PNG for print. We also say that you can use JPG format for print, but it’s not the same quality as PNG, there’s some compression. It also has a white background. So, again, this is primarily for use in let’s say in a white page of a website or an email. OK?

So, here’s the difference. And, I don’t know if you can see it on your screen, depending on your resolution, but if you were to look very closely here… and let’s see now if I can bring my pen up… this is the PNG here, and you can see how smooth it is compared to the JPG, again it might not quite show up as well on your computer screen, but trust me, the PNG is definitely a super-high quality format. And you also notice the JPG has a white background. So, if you’re a Photoshop person you can take that out, but there’s really no reason because we give it to you in a transparent format in the PNG. So, I wanted to show that right there.

For web and email we have our JPG and GIF formats, and these are resized, so they’re exactly half the size of the PNG. So the PNG format is very high resolution, and then the software behind the scenes cuts it in half and creates a JPG version, which we just talked about, and then a GIF format. So, some of you might be familiar with GIF format, GIF is different than JPG in that it allows a transparent background also, like the PNG, but it’s also very low quality, it’s the lowest quality of the formats we have. So again, bringing up this, you’ll see the ‘Wow’ is now half the size, you’ll see the JPG has the white background. And again, you may not be able to tell on your screen, but the GIF version, why it’s not bad, is definitely more compressed. The GIF version tends to be very, very small, and again, members use that for websites and email marketing.

Alright?

So that’s the standard formats that probably 99 percent of the members typically are using day in and day out, however, we also allow all of our members to download vector format versions of all CopyDoodles. Now, this is CopyDoodles, not the Comics or anything like that, but every CopyDoodle, and at last count there’s probably 7,000 or 8,000 unique CopyDoodles on this site, they also have vector versions. If you have a design background that would probably interest you because professional designers typically like to use vector-based files when they’re designing.

So the vector format we give you is an EPS file, that stands for an encapsulated postscript file, again most professional designers prefer this format, and I’ll show you why in a moment, but to use this format you have to have the right software tools, and typically you’re using something like Adobe Illustrator to access and edit these files. Now, the versions that we give all of our members, they’re red-only, so they’re red Doodles, but again a professional designer can take that EPS file and colorize it to any color that matches your logo, or whatever you might be doing. So, if you have a professional designer and they say, “Hey listen, I really want to be able to use a vector version when we’re doing something for you…” they can easily do that with the CopyDoodles Access Club.

What’s nice about vector versions, and this is the big thing right here, no pun intended, but the thing with vector versions is they allow a Doodle to be resized without any distortion. So, if you need a 1” CopyDoodle it will look great, and if you need a 10’ CopyDoodle it will look at the same quality. Now, the PNG, the JPG, the GIF versions – I won’t get too technical on you, but they are what is know as a raster format, and while they look great in print for like a sales letter or postcard, if you were to put those on the side of a bus it would start to distort. The vector version does not do that. As a matter of fact, you could have a CopyDoodle as big as a bus, and I’m going to show you one here in a moment that is on the side of a bus. But, that’s the value. The value is you have a vector version Doodle, like we have here on the screen. And no matter how I resize it the quality level stays the same. So, again, you should be able to see that here on the screen.

And we’ve had members create huge CopyDoodles, this is Darren Spindler [assumed spelling], and he had the Kids Bowl Free Bus that toured around the country, and you can see us pointing there. He just used CopyDoodles as an underline there, but that is a CopyDoodle, a vector version there.

Our good friends at Gardener’s [assumed spelling] Mattress and More out here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, they have CopyDoodles. And again, to get the CopyDoodle to look really good, and this is on the side of their delivery truck, they’re using the vector version so that it can be stretched and enlarged to the level that is needed for a large side of a truck like this.

My friend Michael McClain, he has a banner on the outside of his office up in Canada – probably a little hard to see, but he’s using our – this is a huge banner and you can see the green arrows there. And chances are those hours are probably 4’ wide. And again, the vector version allows a high-quality print.

One more example here from my friend Dave Herrington [assumed spelling] and Tom, they did a big banner, again, putting vector-based Doodles on there allows them to be printed at very high quality.

OK?

So, about the CopyDoodles vector version, you want to use it when you need the highest quality, largest Doodle – I probably should add that there – largest Doodle possible. And, if you’re only doing sales letters, postcards, advertising, chances are you may not ever need to use the vector version, but I want everyone to be aware of it, you can view them with Microsoft Word, which I’m going to show you here in a second, if you’re on the Macintosh there’s something called Apple Preview, which allows you to view EPS files, and then Adobe Acrobat.

But, just very quickly – I’m going to bring up Word – and here is Microsoft Word where I’ve embedded a – this is a PNG CopyDoodle, so it’s the transparent background. Now this is the same version, now it’s going to be a little hard here, but if I were to really start distorting this thing, and again, they’re very high-quality the PNG, so I’m probably not going to be able to make it big enough on the screen, but you will see it would start getting a little fuzzy. The vector version, which at first glance looks of a lower quality, the thing about the vector version is as you stretch this thing, no matter how big you make it, it will give you a consistent CopyDoodle. So, I just wanted to kind of show that difference there. I’m just in Microsoft Word, so Microsoft Word will allow you to check out the EPS files, if you need them.

Again, typically what will happen there is you’ll have a designer who’s working with you, and they will say, “Listen, I really prefer to use a vector version.” OK?

And again, you or your designer typically would use Adobe Illustrator to edit, and then they can colorize it, and they can also use Adobe Photoshop to look at them. Then there’s a program called Corel Draw.

So really, again, this is going to be a quick webinar, because it’s not a complex topic, but I wanted everyone to be aware this month of a.) the different file formats we have available for you, when you ought to be using them, and really what the vector version is, because a lot of times people – if I just log in very quickly here, let’s see if I can log
into – there’s my… I’m going to log into CopyDoodles Access Club, which I could have done right there. But, again, if I search on a Doodle, and go to the colorization page here’s all of the different formats, and then there’s the EPS format. I can just click on that and download that.

Alright? So that is – and I’ll open it up for Q&A  here in a moment, but I also just want to show you very quickly, if you haven’t seen it, hopefully you did because you’re on today’s webinar, a couple of things, we just uploaded the November Doodle Digest. So you can check that out. And a ton of new content on this site, a couple of new fonts, and our 3-dimensional Doodles, we’ve just added a bunch of those, it’s a little bit of a different type of Doodle, so you can check those out by clicking on ‘View Latest Content’ on the home page. OK?

So, let’s go back and I’ll answer any questions, and we’ll get this wrapped up. I actually have another one o’clock webinar I’ve got to get ready for. So, I’ve got three webinars today, it’s a webinar Monday. But, let me see if anyone has any questions, you can type it right in the Q&A section of GoToWebinar, and let me make sure that I have that screen up. Alright, I had closed it down. So, any questions? Alright.

Patty is asking, “I’m creating a promotional item, e.g. like a t-shirt. What format do you recommend?” So promotional item, actually Patty, I’ve been wanting to do – I’ll probably do an episode, a Power U webinar, on promotional items, because again CopyDoodles work great on t-shirts, you name it, pens, all of that kind of good stuff. But, here’s what I would recommend, and I’d really recommend this for any type of – anything that you’re doing. I would start with the PNG format, Patty, and see how it turns out. Typically when you’re doing a promotional item you’ll send it to the company that’s designing it, and they’ll tell you if it’s not good enough quality.

Again, we’ve always used PNG for all of the stuff that we’ve done. So, something like a t-shirt, unless the PNG version doesn’t look good, so if it’s a big Doodle – actually, I take that back, because I did see somebody create a sweatshirt and they put CopyDoodles on it, and I thought it looked a little distorted because they probably used a Doodle that was a little too small. So, start with the PNG, see if that works, if it’s something like on the chest, where it’s a smaller logo or something you’re doing, I think a PNG would work fine. If it’s… like this sweatshirt it was the whole front and back, then I would recommend using the vector version. Anything that’s bigger than a sales letter or a postcard you can see where the vector version can benefit.

Alright. Jason is asking, “How do I colorize the VectorDoodles? Why are they only red?” Well, Jason, the reason why is we use a piece of software that allows us to convert the CopyDoodles that we have on the site to the vector version, and by default most of the Doodles are red as we create them. Again, because they’re so targeted for typically a professional design – professional designers know what they want, they know they want to match a certain color. So for them to go into Adobe Illustrator and colorize that is very simple for them, so it just makes life a lot easier, but again, anybody who knows what they’re doing with the Illustrator can colorize them to match logos and any RGB value or CMYK value colors. OK?

Everyone have a great day. And, I’ll see you next month. Take care, everybody.

CopyDoodles October 2012 Updates

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We’ve uploaded a bunch of new CopyDoodles content for October 2012, including the following CopyDoodles:

CopyDoodles Rose Edition: A brand new, artistic CopyDoodles style, which includes over 100 unique phrases and words.

CopyDoodles

CopyDoodles for blog sites and web sites: A collection of CopyDoodles to get more comments and interaction from your readers.

CopyDoodles

Animated CopyDoodles: 27 new animated CopyDoodles (like the one above) which you can use on your web site, web videos and even PowerPoint presentations!  Each animated CopyDoodle includes an SWF, MOV and animated GIF version.

New CopyDoodle comics:  We’ve added a bunch of new Thanksgiving, entrepreneurial and other comics.

CopyDoodles

New CopyDoodles handwriting fonts: We’ve created a matching “Rose font” to match the new CopyDoodles edition and added the CopyDoodles Dan font!

CopyDoodles

CopyDoodles

October 2012 Doodle Digest member newsletter!

CopyDoodles

CopyDoodles members can log in now and get all this great new content.  If you’re not yet a CopyDoodles member, head on over to https://www.copydoodles.com/pricing and become a member today!

 

 

CopyDoodles Power U Training: Using CopyDoodles in Facebook

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Today we’re going to talk about are using CopyDoodles on Facebook. And, I don’t see a lot of folks doing this, and I need to do a better job myself, but I thought it would be a good reminder for myself and a good reminder for everybody that are some smart ways in which you can use and leverage your CopyDoodles membership to add CopyDoodles to your Facebook posts.

So, why would you want to do this? Well, it’s been proven that any type of marketing material, including Facebook posts, can get more attention and higher readership when there is an image or a nice photograph, or something to catch the person’s eye. So without a doubt Facebook posts that have images, and if you go on and look at other people’s posts you’ll see the ones that have the most comments typically are ones that have some nice pictures, or something like that. So, it makes sense to have some sort of attention-grabbing graphic, if your goal is to have people spot your post and then hopefully read it.

If graphics can help, then I believe hand-draw Doodles, and handwriting can add even more response, especially on an electronic medium like Facebook, where you don’t typically see handwriting, or you’re not used to seeing handwriting, it’s a little bit of a pattern interrupt, and that little bit of personality, that little bit of personalization, that human touch on a Facebook wall can grab more eyeballs.

Now, during this training I’m going to show you the different ways you can use CopyDoodles in Facebook, and how to use our CopyDoodles Facebook application. So, I’m going to go through some slides, and then I’m going to do some live demo, and then we’ll open it up for Q&A.

If you haven’t seen some of my posts, or even other members’ posts using our CopyDoodles app, this is typically what it would look like. You see there at the top ‘Anniversary Sale.’ The one at the bottom is one of our members, I believe who actually used one of our Comics, so you can actually use a Comic, link to a Comic, you can use our Doodles, and it basically is a thumbnail image that folks would see on your wall.

We have also used – I don’t know if anybody online today is doing any type of Facebook advertising, but here are two ads that we ran earlier this year with Facebook advertising, and the one on the left, believe it or not, did really well for us, the flushing the money down the toilet. So, there’s how we used CopyDoodles as a Facebook image, an image in a Facebook ad. So, again, on your post, or on your ads are great places to add CopyDoodles.

Now, we have designed a number of Facebook-specific Doodles, and you can go into the CopyDoodles Access Club and search on ‘Facebook’. These are Doodles that are designed to be placed on a post, so they’re shorter, their tighter, they’re more square. And, if you go in and type in ‘Facebook’ in the search bar you will find those.

You can also upload a CopyDoodle, or one of our Comics as an image. And the way you do that – I’ll show you that in a second – but you’ve got to be very careful with doing this because typically CopyDoodles are very large. And when you put them in Facebook in this manner they will get resized and look odd, OK? And I’ll show you an example of it in a second, and it may not give you a desired look. But, the way you do this is you go into Facebook and use the ‘Add Photo’ option and upload the image.

I’m not recommending this method, I’ve seen people do it, you can do it, but again what will happen is you’ll get posts that can look like this… so you see the one on the left, that’s using one of our new QuotationDoodles, and that’s what it looks like on my wall. So, if I click on that, if a person clicks on it, they’ll see the entire Doodle, but when it’s on my wall it looks odd because it’s getting cropped. Same with the Comic on the right-hand side, that was a post we did, again, it’s cropping it. Now, I was OK with that one, because it got the main point, the 5th anniversary. But, just be aware if you’re going to post a post and upload a Doodle or a Comic as an image/photo it can and will probably get cropped.

Now, the two ways that we do suggest using CopyDoodles – the first, and this is very simple, anybody can do this, is in your post – and I’m going to show you this in a second – in your post you can share a link to a website that has CopyDoodles on it, or our Comics, or whatever, and when you’re creating that post you can link to one of the graphics that are on that page and typically you would want to link it to a CopyDoodle because it has that handwriting. So, here you see Pat Flynn, who’s one of our members, and you see he’s putting a post there, and he’s linking it to a Comic that he has on his website.

On the right there is one of my posts. Again, I’m linking it to a blog post, and on that blog post I have that quote, which is a CopyDoodle. And, I can put that right in my Facebook post. And this works for both personal and fan pages. So, whether it’s your personal page or if you have a fan page you can do it this way.

And the way you do it, and again I will show a live demo, you’ll see right here I cut and paste a blog post URL into my Facebook post, and as soon as it does that it brings up my page. And then if you see right here it says ‘Choose a Thumbnail,’ and by choosing that thumbnail I can click through and it will go through all of the images on that page – I happened to choose this nice little Comic that we had. So, that’s what my post will look like, and it’s an easy way to add CopyDoodles and Comics to your posts. OK?

Now the second way of doing this is using our CopyDoodles Facebook app. So, I’m not sure if you’re aware of that, but there is a way to actually have a piece of software that will do this for you. Now, this works for our Text Doodles, our Shape Doodles, it works for our custom Doodle Generator, and our Stamp Generator. And what it does is it will create the post for you – now, do not ask me why, but my developers came back to me, we had some challenges in the previous version, this only works on your personal pages. It’s apparently a Facebook limitation with apps that we cannot touch the professional pages. And so if you have a personal page this is a very quick and easy way to add CopyDoodles.

And, what they look like is something like this… so here’s one I did just earlier today, getting ready for this presentation, but there is the Doodle. And, it creates this post, our Facebook app creates that post for you.

Here’s another one I did, and I used one of our custom Stamps. But, I want to point out, again, you’ve got to be careful, you can have too much text. This Stamp was a little bit big. So, you can see it kind of shrunk it down, it really doesn’t look like anything. So, I put that up there on purpose. So, make sure you’re just doing a few words, or a graphic that’s simple so that when it gets shrunk down to be a thumbnail on your post it’s easily visible.

And another tip is you cannot use an apostrophe, which has bit me a couple of times, as you’ll see right there, we’re – we are. I thought I was putting an apostrophe in there, and it has to do with some code – I won’t go into the detail. There is workaround, the workaround is to use the backhash mark [`], which is typically on the – I call it the tilde key [~], which is right here, it’s this little symbol right there. On my keyboard it’s above the ‘Tab’ key on the left-hand side. So, if you put that backhash mark [`], it looks like an apostrophe, and you can have the correct punctuation. Otherwise it just kind of looks like that, and you may have seen that happen on other things too with other pieces of software. It’s just the way characters are rendered on screen.

So, they’re the two ways. And let me just show you, let me do a quick demonstration. Again, we’re going to keep this to about 20 minutes, and open it up to Q&A.

So, let me bring up the CopyDoodles Access Club. And, the first thing I’m going to do – actually, I don’t even need to do in the CopyDoodles Access Club, I’m actually going to go into Facebook first… alright, so they’re I’m in Facebook. And the first demo is option number one, which is basically sharing a link. So, let me – I already have it over here, on my other screen, but let me type in that URL. Now remember I showed you this earlier, there’s a URL to a blog post. And, if you see here it says ‘Choose Thumbnail,’ so I can scroll through that and here are all the graphics on that page. And, again, I have a Comic on there, so I can choose that Comic and if I hit ‘Post’ it will allow me to actually have that Comic as part of my post. So, if you have CopyDoodles on a website and you just put this link in there as part of your post you can actually use the CopyDoodles that are in that website as a graphic for your post. So, hopefully that makes sense, very quick and simple.

And then the second way is to use our Facebook app. So, let me just go in very quickly. And, I’m going to use the very first one I see here, ‘Check it out.’ So, you click on it, hopefully everyone is familiar with this – let me do a blue. And right here it says ‘Facebook,’ so you choose that. It’s really simple. The very first time you use it, it will actually log in – it will do it all automatically for you. It will install the app automatically for you. And, it will pop up a graphic and you just hit ‘Log In’ and you’ll be into Facebook. But, I already have the app install. So, if I hit ‘Download’ it brings up our app. And what you do is you fill out these fields, and there’s a key here to show you what the post will look like. So, you see a status message, and that’s where it will be on your post; web link headline that’s that second arrow; your URL, there it is; and then your message.

So let me do that very quickly here. I’m going to cut and paste from something I already have. And then I will take a breath, and walk through this one more time. Make sure your website has http:// ahead of it, you need that. Alright, so I have it all laid out. And as soon as I hit ‘Post to Facebook,’ see, if I hadn’t had the app install it would say ‘Log In.’ It comes back to CopyDoodles, and let’s go back to Facebook here. There it is. This is all real-time. There is my post, “Free Webinar Training…” 11 seconds ago.

And what’s cool about these posts is that when someone clicks on that it will actually go to the URL you have in that post, so in this case I put CopyDoodles. So this is public, and if anyone goes to my Facebook page they will actually see that post. So, it’s literally that simple and that easy to use CopyDoodles and our CopyDoodles Facebook app. Alright?

So if you have any questions about that you can ask me here in a moment.

The other thing that I just want to point out very quickly is that there are a variety of Comics that are in this site that are fun to use in your newsletters, or anywhere you want to have a little bit of fun regarding social media and Facebook. So, we have actually several Comics that have been added over the last couple of months that kind of poke a little bit of fun at social media and Facebook. It’s just a little humor thing. So, you can check those out. Again, you can go in and type in ‘Facebook,’ or peruse our Comics. So, I just wanted to point that out, those Comics are there and I’ve seen a couple of members already using them in their newsletter and such. Alright?

I want to open it up to Q&A, if anyone has any questions. If not, we’re going to keep these very tight. I know everyone’s busy.

Someone is asking about the different – what you can use – you cannot use – let me go back to CopyDoodles real quick. They’re asking what files can be used on Facebook with the Facebook app. And again, you can use any of the Text Doodles, any of the Shape Doodles, and on Generators you can use the Doodle Generator and Stamp Generator. OK? Those are the media that are in the CopyDoodles Access Club that are accessible via the Facebook app. So again, all you do is go in, click on a Doodle, and if you’re able to use it with our Facebook app it will be right here, it will say ‘Facebook.’

So a question is also being asked about the Comics. The Comics cannot be used with the Facebook app. If you want to use a Comic on a Facebook post, again you can either upload it – let me kind of come back here – add a photo, so upload a photo. I could put it that way… don’t forget, it probably will get cropped. Or, if I’m linking to a page that has Comics on it, you can do it that way, you can actually link like I showed you, and pick the Comic that is on your page. OK? So, that’s how you can use Comics.

I want to thank everybody. I want to thank you for your membership, I appreciate it. Make sure you check out the October Doodle Digest, it will be available next week. By the way, if you haven’t seen that, real quick shout out, right under ‘Announcements’ you can get your… it’s a monthly newsletter I’m publishing for CopyDoodles members, so hopefully you’ve all seen that. And, the next issue will be out next week. So, thank you very much and I’ll look forward to seeing you on the next webinar. Take care everybody!

New & Improved CopyDoodles Site Now Open

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CopyDoodles

I’m pleased to announce the opening of the completely rebuilt CopyDoodles Access Club, which is the world’s premier site for hand-drawn graphics and doodles for marketing, advertising and promotions.   First released in 2007, CopyDoodles are used by the world’s top copywriters, marketers and business owners to create marketing that gets noticed and responded to.

The CopyDoodles Access Club is a software system that allows members to search through, colorize and download from a database of thousands of hand-drawn marketing phrases and graphics. You can even post CopyDoodles in your Facebook posts.

CopyDoodles members also have access to our unique collection of handwriting fonts, animated CopyDoodles, our royalty-free comic collection and our unique Generators, which allow members to create their own personalized and customized graphics on the fly.

With this version of the CopyDoodles Access Club, we’ve made it easier than ever before to search for and use CopyDoodles in your marketing.  You can check out our Top 21 CopyDoodles Access Club enhancements by clicking here.  For more information about CopyDoodles, please visit www.copydoodles.com.

CopyDoodles Lunch & Learn: Online Marketing Tips

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Continuing, a few side notes, if you guys didn’t have the chance to check out our CopyBling that came out this week, we are looking for beta testers of our brand new CopyDoodles site. This is just a screenshot of the site. It’s brand new. It’s going to be really, really cool. It’s going to be really easy to search for stuff. You’ll be able to hover over images and they’ll pop up bigger on the screen, so you can read the taglines on comics clearer, you can see the doodles bigger. It’s going to be really cool. So we’re just looking for a few people to beta test it out. We’re looking for about ten. I have a few already, so the spots are limited, but please email me at Lauren@MikeCapuzzi.com if you are interested.

Also we are going to be taking a little hiatus with Lunch and Learns. I am actually moving to Seattle in two weeks. I just found out about this. So I just wanted you guys all to know. We’re going to take a little bit of a break with the CopyDoodles Access Club, with the Lunch and Learn, just because we’re getting so busy with the CopyDoodles Access Club, the new launch, and we’re going to be working on that. So, there won’t be Lunch and Learns for a little bit, but stayed tuned.

Then our members-only Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week, Mike is actually flying to Dallas in about an hour to go the Super Conference, so our Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week, I know you guys were asking two weeks ago if we had at the Turbo Charge Your Marketing available. At the time we only had it available if you purchased the Swipe File, but now we do have it available just to purchase the product. Just head over to www.CopyDoodles.com/blog to pick it up and it’s over there.

Let’s just get started with online marketing tips. As you know the replay will be available at www.CopyDoodles.com/blog At the end I will give you a chance to ask some questions and I’ll be answering some questions at the end.

So the first thing, obviously, that you can do with CopyDoodles online is add them to websites. I really like this website from Food For Me, because used our post-it note generator. They wrote a little note and they actually just pasted it in their blog post here. That kind of makes it stand out and look different. It’s just a great way to capture attention. It looks like somebody actually wrote you a short little note, even though you know it’s online, it gets people to call them and order some catering.

I really like this one. This one is for some TeleWhatevers that were being hosted. Gerri-Lynn [assumed spelling] Knight uses these comics a lot in her TeleWhatevers and she says she has a lot better response when she uses them. And it just looks simple, it just looks like she added an image. She doesn’t do anything crazy, so check those out.

I love Michael Carroll’s websites. He always has them bright, fun, and he always uses CopyDoodles. As you can see, he’s got some checkmarks here for bullets, and then he’s also using a CopyDoodle at the very bottom, asking people to call, he obviously used one of the CopyDoodle Generators, then he also puts some arrows there pointing it, and it really stands out, because you’re looking at this page and there’s a lot of color, there’s a lot of things that you want to read and pay attention to, then at the bottom, the thing that you notice the most is that you should call him.

Next this is from Lexington Family Chiropractic. This is just another really great website that I liked, so I pulled it. It’s got a bunch of different CopyDoodles on there, as you can see, just throughout the image, and then in the header the most important part is that it has, “Call us today,” because you want people to read your information and see that, but you want them to call you to make an appointment, or ask questions, or find out more.

This is Ted Nicholas’ site. He is using a ton of CopyDoodles on here. He’s got the stamp on the bottom. He’s got ‘Dazzling Results,’ and this is only a shot of the top of the page, because it’s a really long sales letter page, but there are more CopyDoodles at the bottom, so head over to www.TedNicholas.com in order to see the other CopyDoodles, so you can kind of see what they look like.

Emails are a really great way to use CopyDoodles too. This was an email that’s actually in the Swipe File. It’s one of our success stories. This email was sent out first without any CopyDoodles in it at all, as a free webinar. This was several months or so prior. Then he sent them out as a paid webinar, so people paid to be on this webinar, and he just added some CopyDoodles to it, and he said he got overwhelming response, so many people responded to this email versus the free webinar, more people came to the paid webinar because of the CopyDoodles interaction on there than came to the free webinar, which is pretty cool.

This is also another email sent by Michael Carroll. He’s an insurance agent and he sends this out with new claims, so as you can see he’s just got a few CopyDoodles in there. He has a really great success story too. He said that he was really successful, once he started adding little CopyDoodles in his emails, because before he was just sending this out blank and people weren’t reading it and they weren’t noticing information that was supposed to be sent to them about their insurance policies and about updates and things, but now he gets a lot better response rate, he gets people signing up, because of the CopyDoodles that are added in there. It’s really simple to do this, because all you have to do is type up a basic email and then insert some CopyDoodles as pictures.

Banner ads are a really great way to use CopyDoodles on your websites, or if you’re doing any advertising, whether you’re doing through Google Ads, or you’re doing it on somebody else’s website, or even on your own, just add some CopyDoodles in there. So I pulled two CopyDoodles banner ads that we’ve used, you might have seen them on some of the sites that we have. I pulled some too that customers and CopyDoodles users have sent us. There’s a banner at the bottom that was actually used as a header of a website, and there’s a banner here on the top-left that has a font, it has the underline; it’s simple, but it captures your attention. Compared to all of the other banner ads that are out there this will really stand out, especially if you’re using Google Ads or something and you’re on a site that’s full of ads, yours will definitely stand out to the person that’s looking at it.

Social media, now with the Facebook changes on Facebook pages where you can now have the big header at the top here. There’s really great different ways that you can use CopyDoodles in order to enhance the look of that, because it kind of gets a little fuzzy, the image, on Facebook when you just have text and you’re not supposed to have text, but you don’t want your logo, if it’s just text, so if you play around and use some CopyDoodles on there, as you can see I’m using the notebook paper that I pulled from the CopyNotes section of the site, I’m using some tape that I used from the FunDoodles section, and then obviously an arrow. Then if you can see my little bottom-left, that little computer there, I actually just created that really quickly, that’s also the little icon that comes up every time you post something on the CopyDoodles page and I respond back; things like that. So there’s a lot of different areas that you can use CopyDoodles on social media to capture attention.

You can also use it on your Facebook pages on the welcome page. If you do have a welcome page that’s set up on your site there are some great plug-ins you can use with WordPress in order to do this, if you’re not exactly sure how to set it up on your page. There are some free plug-ins and there are also some paid plug-ins. We use a free one that’s really, really simple to use, if anybody is interested I can probably — just message me on Facebook, or something, on the page and I can send you over the name. But it’s really easy to set up these pages.

Again, I’m using a CopyNote that I just pulled from the FunDoodles section, or the CopyNote generator section of the site. I’ve got stamps on there. We have an opt-in, and this is a really easy way to capture attention and get more leads through Facebook, especially if you’re doing Facebook advertising you can — I know there’s really small images that you can use with Facebook advertising, you can only use like one image and then it’s text, but if you use a small CopyDoodle image, we’ve done this, we get a really great response using a CopyDoodle image as opposed to using a regular image, and then some text, and then people click on that and they link over to your welcome page of your Facebook page and see something like this, they’re more likely to interact and then engage with you.

Then some resources — Web October I did in October 2011, if you guys were not able to catch it, but I did an entire month of just adding CopyDoodles to websites. I did Part 1 and Part 2. So the Part 1 was very basic. Part 2 was a little more advanced, how to use HTML, how to add CopyDoodles into opt-in boxes and things like that. So if you’ve ever been wondering how to use CopyDoodles on your website and you needed the basic tutorial on WordPress, or you wanted to ever pass this to somebody in your office, check those out. The links are at www.CopyDoodles.com/blog, links at the bottom. Send somebody or do it yourself, and watch those, because they’re really basic and really easy.

Then I did CopyDoodles in Social Media, I did two parts to that. So, I did a basic social media — I’m not talking basic like I told you how to sign up for Facebook. I’m talking basic like I showed you different ways you can post things, unique ways you can use CopyDoodles in your social media. Then I also went through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and things like that.

Then in September I did two really, really helpful Lunch and Learns; Using CopyDoodles in Email, so if you do want to create any emails like the emails I’ve showed, I do show you how to put them in there, how to load up the images. I know I get a lot of questions form people about using CopyDoodles in email, so definitely check that out. Then also I did one on using CopyDoodles in webinars, so you’ll want to head over there and check that out too. And, that was in September.

All of the links are at www.CopyDoodles.com/blog

So there are a ton of resources for you, if you do want to do anything online and you’ve been skeptical or you’ve been hesitant about doing things online because you just don’t know how, or you’re afraid that it’s not going to be easy, and these Lunch and Learns are really basic tutorials that eventually turn into advanced tutorials that will show you how to do everything you need.

So while we’re on hiatus you can check those out. I definitely think you should check them out so that you kind of get a better way of different things that you can do things online.

CopyDoodles Lunch & Learn: Offline Marketing Tips

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Hi everyone! Welcome to today’s CopyDoodles Lunch and Learn. Bear with me a little bit because I am using a brand new computer and I still haven’t gotten everything down yet. So hopefully there won’t be any mistakes. But, just in case…

Since Mike is away at InfusionSoft in Arizona, I have a very special members-only Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week. Today that deal is if you purchase our CopyDoodles Swipe File, which has over 700 different examples of marketing ideas and things you can do with CopyDoodles from greeting cards, to sales letter, to online marketing, if you pick that up I will put in the brand new Turbo Charge Your Marketing Product in the box, and basically it’s like getting that completely free, because the Swipe File CD is normally $97, and then I’m just throwing in Turbo Charge Your Marketing. It helps you out with the copy that you want to create and the different types of marketing techniques, more than just CopyDoodles, and your definitely going to want to check that out. If you’re looking for any other simple enhancements to your marketing or if you want to train somebody in your office and you don’t have the time, that’s definitely what you want to check out.
If you go to www.CopyDoodles.com/blog that’s where you can pick it up.

So today’s webinar: Offline Marketing Tips, the replay will be up at www.CopyDoodles.com/blog. Since Mike’s out in Arizona, it might get up early next week, but it will definitely get up there, in case you guys are looking for it, or you want to rewatch it again, or you want to have somebody in your office watch it.

So let’s just get started. I thought this example was a really awesome. This is an example from Brian Bergh. He is a dentist and he sends out really, really exciting different types of marketing pieces to his list, and he’s very, very successful with it. So what he did is kind of in the same realm of — Mike’s away right now — but what he did is he left the office, so he had his team send out some letters to everybody on their list, all of their clients. The letter was called, “When the cat’s away…” So they sent out this letter and it said something like, “Dr. Bergh is out of the office, so I’m going to be having this very big special. I want to get some more people in the office, so make sure to stop by.” This was just the first letter that they sent out.

Then they sent out a second letter, a follow-up letter and it came in a brown paper bag like this, as you can see. So, it’s really interesting, you want to pick it up, you want to look at it, it’s just a really great way to send out a marketing piece. And then of course they talked about the brown paper bag, why they sent it in that. Then they just had a few CopyDoodles on there. I thought that was a really cool way, if you’re looking to beef up your offline marketing, you’re looking for something unique to do that’s like of like a lump mailer, but it’s not as expensive as sending a stress ball, or a key chain, or something like that, is to put something in a paper bag, like he did. So, definitely check something out like that for your business.

Also try sending handwritten letters, if you’ve never done any handwritten letters you can buy paper like this at your local Office Max, Office Depot, Staples, wherever you shop at. A lot of people ask us those questions, but you can pick it up there. You can actually just use one of our CopyFonts and type up a message, you know, create it in Word, just like you normally do, and then print it out on this paper and it will print like this. All you have to do is make sure that you create a bigger margin on the left hand size of your Word document so that it’s a little more than an 1.25”, whatever it is right now, and then you won’t have any issues. What they did was they actually took a Post-It note, used our fonts again, printed out on a Post-It note, which you can actually pick up Post-It notes too at your local office store, and then just tacked it on and sent it out in the mail. So, this is just a really cool attention-grabbing way to capture someone’s attention, because you’re sending out a letter, but you’re sending it out on just different paper and it looks like you handwrote it and sent it out.

Also what we are going to be talking about the rest of this week in blog posts that we put out tomorrow and showing a bunch of examples for is sending a greeting card. Greeting cards are a really great way to capture people’s attention because a lot of times you don’t receive items shaped the same size as a greeting card in the mail, unless they’re coming from a friend or a family member, or somebody that you really care about. This one actually happens to be a postcard, but Al and Stacey created it on Send Out Cards, and you can actually upload CopyComics, CopyDoodles, CopyStamps into Send Out Cards, and then he sent them out from there. He does this all the time. He sent us a ton of different examples.

Send a postcard if you are thinking about doing any types of marketing for the summer. Maybe you’re going to be away, you want to mock that you’re going to be away, send out some sort of special or some sort of deal on a postcard, pull a picture from a past vacation or a current vacation that kind of seems like you’re traveling, it fits in with the whole summer theme, people are away, they’re traveling, they’re on vacation, and then add some CopyDoodles on top of the picture. You can do that in GIMP if you follow the GIMP tutorial that I had two weeks ago. It’s really simple to do, add some stuff on the top of your image and then send it out as a postcard, so it looks like a postcard that you may pick up when you’re out vacationing, but it actually is a little more personalized and it definitely captures people’s attention when they receive it in the mail.

Use a photocopy. I thought this was really cool and it’s actually in the CopyDoodles Swipe file book, what this person did was they actually wrote up a sales letter and they typed it completely up, printed it out, and then what it looks like they did is it looks like they took it and they scanned it into their computer, so it has that little shadow along the edge, or else they took it and then used Photoshop and then kind of morphed it a little bit so that it looked like they had photocopied it. Then they wrote notes all around the outside, they used our Post-It note, they used lots of different CopyDoodles, they used our CopyFonts, and just wrote notes so that it looked like they received a sales letter or they received a letter and now they’re sending it out to you about some new product that they got, if that makes sense. It’s really cool because it looks different. People don’t normally see things like this in the mail, and this is just a really great way to send out a flyer, or any information out to people.

Try different print ads. This is another great thing that you can do going into spring and summer. If you’ve never done any print advertising, now is a great time to do it, because everybody is doing everything online, and there’s not as much competition in the print arena, whether you’re sending it out to people, whether you’re advertising and things like that. I thought this was a really great example from Brad Ross, as you can see he’s using CopyDoodles. He’s using our highlighters there, and then he’s also using some of our CopyNotes and our Post-it notes, which you don’t see a lot of these in print ads, which is why I wanted to include this example. A lot of times you just see people using the CopyDoodles, you don’t see the Post-Its, you don’t see the notes, you don’t see the highlighters, so I just thought that this was a great way to kind of capture people’s attention and to show how you can use all of the stuff in the CopyDoodles Access Club, there’s a stain up there too, use everything and still create a cohesive piece. You don’t have to go overboard, this doesn’t feel like it’s too much. It’s just right.

Write a book — if you’re looking for something to do this summer and you are taking a long vacation, you’re spending time with your family, maybe you could type out a few chapters of an eBook, or a book, while you’re flying, while you’re traveling, while you’re driving — well, not you driving, somebody else driving. Then use CopyDoodles on the cover. A lot of people do these. We have a lot of authors who use CopyDoodles on the cover of their book. They’ll just have a regular picture for the cover of the book, the title, and then they’ll use CopyDoodles around the title and make it look different so that it stands out, whether you are using it as an opt-in gift, as an eBook, whether you’re using it as an eBook that you’re selling to people or you are actually going to create a print book and put some CopyDoodles on it.

Update your business cards. A lot of people have business cards, and I’ve received them in the past, that they haven’t updated in forever, and you can tell, you can tell if you’ve changed stuff on your website, if you’ve changed colors, if you’ve changed the look, that your business cards don’t match your new look. And you can get a bunch of different business cards for really cheap, order them online. Even if you have a business card that you use right now, that you’ve never put CopyDoodles on, open it up, put some CopyDoodles on there, and start using those for your business. As you can see I thought these were some really great examples because they’re so colorful, and the CopyDoodles fit perfectly in them. So, like the bright yellow one, there’s a circle there. He may not have had that circle there before he had CopyDoodles. Basically he took his normal card and just was able to slip in some CopyDoodles in there.

Then the one on the right, that’s black, he has the CopyDoodle on the right edge, so it looks kind of like he had written it last minute and he wants you to check out the back of his card.

Then just some really, really quick tips that I want to give you, these are actually tips from the course that is bonused in with the Swipe File that I was talking about. Some tips just for creating all of your marketing. Make sure that if you’re writing a newsletter, if you have any big bodies of text that you justify your text, like is seen on this print newsletter from Brian Mittman [assumed spelling]. It’s a lot easier to read if you justify your text, it’s just easier for the eye to follow. As you can see it split up his newsletter into three columns — two or three columns is a lot easier to read than just having a big mass of text. People look at text and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much to read,” and they end up not wanting to read it. Whether you’re doing online or you’re doing print media, make sure you’re justifying, that you’re spacing things out, that you’re using columns, because people tend to not read stuff if it’s a big mass of text, and if it has the jagged edges from not being justified.

Stay away from reverse print. Reverse print is when you have a black background and then you have white text on the front. As you can see I actually found this online. I hope nobody knows this guy and that he doesn’t see that I have it on here. But, it stood out from the other ads that I saw online, but it’s hard for me to read. It’s very hard. There were other advertisements that were exactly the same as this, but they were white, and it was a lot more pleasing to my eye and I wanted to respond to that person as opposed to the black. Black is just very hard to read white on top of it. Sometimes you get people who have a black and white image, an actual picture and then they try to put white or black text on top of that and it’s really, really hard to read that too. So make sure that you’re paying attention to the readability of your stuff when you’re sending it out, especially when you’re printing it, because I’m sure this was a very small advertisement in the back of a magazine or a mailer, or something like that. So, even smaller this would be so hard to read.

Then always make sure that you have a call to action. We did a gift certificate blog post a few weeks ago, so I included this image, but make sure that even on your business card, anything that you’re sending out, that you always have a clear call to action so that you’re not just sending out just this gift certificate, that you include a letter with it, or something that you’re sending out that says, “Come in, you’ll get $20 off your purchase. We’re having a sale… we’re doing this or that… Make sure you come in.” “We want to celebrate your birthday with you.” Make sure that there’s a clear call to action for what you want people to do when they receive whatever you’re sending out to them, because it costs a lot too to send this stuff offline. It costs a lot to send direct mail pieces, so you want to make sure that you’re doing the best things that you can in order to get response and great results.

Some other tips that I thought were really cool is have somebody else do your marketing for you. Whether it’s offline, or online marketing, or any type of marketing that you’re doing, make sure that you’re checking Reporter Connection, if you’re not familiar with it, and HARO. So it’s www.ReporterConnection.com and www.HelpAReporterOut.com And, I’ll put these links on www.CopyDoodles.com/blog too. Basically what they are is you get an email once to three times a day, depending on what you subscribe to, and it’s all reporters who are looking for certain business owners, experts, specialists, in order to help them write articles for magazines, newspapers, television — people might be looking for people to come on and do an interview, things like that .

So definitely be checking those out because there’s always things you can reply to. I reply to things all the time and I always get really great responses. So, make sure that you are checking that stuff out, because it’s a free way to get your name out there. If you don’t have the funds or anything to do any print media right now, you could respond to something on Help A Reporter Out and it could end up being in millions of people’s magazines in the next coming months. So, it’s free advertisement.

CopyDoodles Lunch & Learn: “Creating Better-Than-Ever CopyDoodled Pieces in Gimp!”

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Lunch & Learn Transcript:

Lauren: Hi, everyone. Welcome to today’s CopyDoodles Lunch and Learn. I know it’s been quite a while since we’ve had a Lunch and Learn. I think this is actually the first one in March, if I’m correct, since I was away last week.

A few side notes, if you didn’t leave a question or if you want to ask any question during today’s tutorial on GIMP make sure to type them in the questions box on the GoToWebinar screen, and I’ll answer them probably during the webinar and any questions afterwards.

Hopefully this recording will work since last time it didn’t work at all.

A few side notes, our next topic in two weeks will be Simple and Strategic Off-line Marketing Tips, and though I have a brick and mortar business as the picture here this will apply to everyone, so make sure to tune in, it will be our first and April. And happy first day of spring, because that was yesterday, sorry, a little off topic. I’m trying to go fast and get everything covered.

So in today’s webinar we’re going to be talking about creating better than ever CopyDoodled pieces in GIMP. If you joined me last time, thanks for joining me again. We’ll be doing a few things that are similar, but I’ll also be showing you a few other techniques too, just so that you’re not bored out of your mind.

Let’s get started. I have GIMP open. If you do not have GIMP, then head over to www.copydoodles.com because I believe on the post that I did last month I put the link to GIMP, it’s www.GIMP.org. You can download that for free. I’m not sure if they have a Mac version for the newest version of Mac, but I know that they do have it for PC if you’re using a PC.

First I’m going to begin by showing you all of the tools in the toolbox, because this is probably the most important part of GIMP. You’re going to want to get familiar with this area over here on the left hand side. That’s where you’re going to be doing basically everything that you need in GIMP. Today I’m going to be showing you how to create an ‘add to cart’ belcher button. I’m going to be showing you how to create a banner ad. I’m also going to be showing you some cool things that you can do to CopyDoodles bubbles in order to change the color, because I recently had a question about this and I thought it was a really great thing to cover here, because you can really tweak and change anything that you like when it comes to color when it comes to CopyDoodles. You can really do anything in GIMP.

So most important is probably to start in the toolbox. This is the rectangle select tool, this is the ellipse tool, those are tools that you will use if you ever want to create shapes or fill certain areas with color, and I’ll show you how to do that when we get to the belcher button that we’re going to be creating. But the things that I like to use the most are the color picker tool, this is this little eye-dropper here, so if you ever want — let me pull this in. So this is just a belcher button, if you ever want to copy a color, so say you know you want this yellow color to be in the text that you’re writing or you want to make sure that you have the same blue, all you do is use the color picker tool and click on that color and it will show up in this box here, so then you can use that color for text, you can use it to fill any boxes, you can use it basically for anything. So, that is a really important tool.

Also the zoom tool is very important and we’ll be using that a lot just to zoom in and zoom out. It’s really, really simple to use and I’m sure you’re familiar with it from using it in other programs. The move tool is what you’re going to use and you’re going to have to click on before you ever move anything in your piece. So you could be using the lasso and you’re on this layer over here, but you’re going to need to use the move tool in order to move it around in your document, and we’ll be using that a lot. Once you get familiar with GIMP you’ll be using it a lot too and it won’t be so hard. The crop tool is another really important tool, it is this little knife here, so if you ever wanted to crop out something, you just wanted this ‘add to cart button,’ you just click the crop tool, create a box over the item that you want to crop and then press ‘Enter’ and it will automatically crop.

The rotate tool is also very important, it’s right next to the crop tool, as you can see with the little arrows that show something is rotating. What you would do is you’d click on the rotate tool, click on the item that you want to rotate and then just rotate it however you’d like and press ‘Rotate’ to confirm. Press ‘Cancel’ to change your mind. The resize tool works basically the same way as any other resize tool as you would use in Word or Publisher, or any programs that you’re using. You click on the item you want to resize and then you resize it any way that you like. One note to add that when you are resizing in GIMP if you want to make sure that you’re resizing so that your item is always equal, so that you don’t stretch out your image like this, or you don’t stretch out your image in this way. Make sure you hold down the control button when you’re resizing, because that will ensure that everything is equal.

The text button is really important. We’ll be using that a lot today too. It’s very similar to really any other text button that you’d use in any other program. You click on it. You create a box. The only difference is that you don’t actually see your font typing in the box. You type in this little box right here, the GIMP text editor, you put all of your text in there and then once it comes up — so, if I wanted to write, “Hi, my name is Lauren,” or something like that, your text will come up, it’s a little hard to see because I’m typing on top of this background there. Your text will come up, you change the color from this dropdown box that comes down, you change the font by clicking on the font item here, and it will automatically change. You can also change the size really easily just by clicking these down and up arrows. I really like that feature in GIMP because if you’re not exactly sure how big an area is or how big your font needs to be, all you have to do is click the little arrows until your font is the size that you need it to be. You don’t need to figure out what font size you need, or think about it too much.

You change the color here. So if I wanted to change the color I would just click on the color button down at the bottom of this toolbox and I would choose either a color that I had recently used, say I wanted to use orange, or I could even use these little arrows here, and adjust the hue, I could adjust to really any color that I like. On the left hand side here you will see the current color. So whenever you move these sliders the current color will change. I’m just going to press ‘OK’ and as you can see my text automatically changed.

The bucket tool you will probably use a lot too. If you are ever creating a rectangle
item — let me just create one really quickly, just to show you. If I created a box right here and I wanted to fill it out with this blue color, that is exactly what the bucket tool does. It just fills an area with color, with whatever color you choose. If you want to change that color you click on the color at the top of the toolbar, change the color like I just showed you. Press ‘OK’, and then you refill that item.

Some other quick shortcuts that you’ll want to know and you’ll probably want to write down if you don’t use these, ‘Ctrl Z’ is to undo something. So, say, I painted this box pink, but I changed my mind. I’d like it blue ‘Ctrl Z’ and it will automatically go back. You don’t have to find the undo button. ‘Ctrl C’ is to copy. So if I want to copy this layer, as you can see it’s already highlighted, but if I want to copy it I’d press ‘Ctrl C’. If I want to paste it I’d press ‘Ctrl V’ and it would create another layer. In order to cut it from my document I’d press ‘Ctrl X’. So ‘Ctrl Z’ is to undo something you did; ‘Ctrl C’ is to copy something; ‘Ctrl X’ is to cut; and ‘Ctrl V’ is to paste. So that should cover all of the really step-by-step basic start-ups.

The first thing that I’m going to show you how to do is how to create a belcher button very similar to this belcher button right here. The only thing that I’m not exactly sure how to do in GIMP, and if somebody knows how to do this, or if you guys are familiar with it and can tell me, I might even do some research to find it out myself, is to figure out how to add this strikethrough right through the text. I’m not exactly sure how to do that, so today I’m just going to put: “Regular price: $2.97, Today: $1.97,” and I’m not going to put that line through it.

The first thing that you’re going to want to begin with when you’re in GIMP is knowing the size of the item that you want to create. What I do normally, if I have a blog, is I find out the width of my blog from either my webmaster or I know. Most blogs will actually be around 500 pixels wide. You’re always going to talk in pixels when you’re using your computer. You’re never going to talk in inches.

So most are about 500 pixels wide. The belcher button is actually 460 pixels wide and 220 pixels high. That’s just your typical belcher button, it’s always been that size. You can resize it to whatever size you want, but that’s just typically how big it is.

So if I want to create a new document I go ‘File’ — ‘New’ and I’m going to type in my width. So I want my width to be, and notice it’s always in pixels here. If you want it to be in inches you can do that too, if you’re creating an 8.5” x 11” or something like that. But, I’m working in pixels. So I’m going to choose 460, because that’s the width of a belcher button the long way, and then 220 is the height of a belcher button. I’m going to press ‘OK’. And as you can see I have my background and I’m ready to create anything that I want here.

The first thing that I’m going to do is I’m going to put in my text. So I’m going to click on the text button. I want my text color to be a nice blue color, very similar to the button that I showed you. So, I’ve recently used this dark blue. That will work. And I’m just going to create a box along the top. It’s going to say, “Regular price: $2.97, Today’s price: $1.97” As you can see the font is way too big. So I’m just going to make that a little bit smaller by using the arrows. I’m going to change my font too, just because I don’t think that this font — it’s a little heavy for a belcher button, so I’m just going to go probably over to Arial, which is a thinner font, and just use that. I’d like to center this and there is a justify area down here on the text bar, so I’m just going to press the center, so that it’s centered, and I’m going to close that.

Now in GIMP, the way that it works is everything works on layers. On the right hand side you can see we have another toolbox. This is the layer toolbox. As you can see one layer is the background, so that’s white. If I wanted to change that to this dark blue, or I wanted to change it to pink, I would choose the color. I would make sure I was highlighted on the background, and I’d use my bucket fill and fill it. But, I don’t want to do that, but if you ever wanted to do that that’s really simple to do.

Next is my text, which created a new layer. So this layer lays on top of the background layer, and I can do anything with it. I can move it, if I wanted, if I thought it was too high up I would use the move button here and I would click on the font and move it. The one thing with GIMP when you do move any fonts or anything like that is you have to click on a letter. As you can see if I click on the background, there’s a lot of background there, it will actually move the background instead of the text. So just make sure you’re paying attention to what layer you’re on and what you’re doing.

OK, the next thing that I’m going to want to do is I’m going to create the big yellow button that says ‘add to cart’. So I’m just going to click my color and I’m just going to choose yellow as my color. What I’m going to do is use the rectangle tool and I’m just going to create that ‘add to cart’ button that is on your typical belcher button.

This ‘add to cart’ button, this yellow button, I’m going to create that now. So, I’m just going to create a regular rectangle, but something I didn’t do, and I did this just to show you guys, is I actually didn’t put my rectangle on a new layer. So, when I go to fill it I’m going to have some problems, as you can see it’s not filling. That’s because I tried to create a rectangle on the same layer as the text, and that doesn’t work. So when you want to create a new shape or anything like that, you need to create a new layer and you do that by clicking on this little piece of paper right here and pressing ‘OK.’ So now I have a new layer.

I’m ready, now I create my rectangle, and I fill it with yellow. And I’m going to put the ‘add to cart’ text right on top of it. As you can see my text is actually in yellow right now, that’s why it’s not showing up. So I’m just going to click the text color box and choose black. It’s already centered, so I don’t have to worry about that. I’m going to increase the size, and as you guys know if you wanted to change the font you would do that by clicking on the font button, just since we don’t have a lot of time I’m not going to play around with the fonts, but just if you wanted to do that.

Now if you did want to have that red line around the yellow box and you realize that you want to create a really quick rectangle or something like that to layer behind the yellow box, just so it looks better, you would just create another layer and make sure that the layer is underneath the yellow layer. So now we have another blank layer. I’m going to choose red. And I’m just going to draw another rectangle, it’s a little bit bigger than the ‘add to cart’ button. And I’m going to fill that with red. As you can now I have a little bit of an outline. You can play around with the sizing and things like that.

Then of course the only other things you would add on the button is you would add the ‘add to cart’ text right here that’s underlined, and you can easily do that by just creating another text box, and with text boxes you don’t need to create another layer, you just need to start drawing and it will create its own new layer, which is really simple.

So you’re going to add another ‘add to cart,’ you would underline it and there is an underline, which you can use here. There is a way you can underline it, it usually shows up in your little text box, for some reason mine’s not showing up. But it’s normally over here and it probably should show up for yours. I probably accidentally took it away when I was playing around with stuff. But, if you have any problems with it let me know.

Then the last thing you would use is you would probably add in your Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover logos. You could easily pull those off line and then just pull them into your document and resize them and place them underneath all of this button. But your belcher button will be done.

The last thing that I always use a CopyDoodle border around my belcher button. So I already downloaded this CopyDoodles border, as you can see here. If you want to download this, it’s in the CopyDoodles Access Club, just search on the search term
‘box 3’ and you’ll find it. All I do is I pull this image in. As you can see the CopyDoodles border is really, really big, so you can’t see it and it doesn’t show up on my screen and that’s really hard to deal with, but all you have to do is zoom out.

So, I’m going to use my zoom tool. I’ll make sure that I’m zooming out, and I click until I can see the rectangle here. The next thing I do is I choose the resize scale tool. I hold my Ctrl button and I just resize this until I think it’s the size that I need. And then I move it all the way over to my document. So as you can see I need to resize this a little bit more. So, I’m just going to scale it again, and as you can see if you do hold Ctrl for some of this, sometimes it won’t be the exact size, so once it gets down to it sometimes you do need to stretch a border or something like that a little more than you normally would and you won’t keep the exact same constraints, but that’s OK. I’m going to scale one last time, this keeps getting in my way. And press ‘Scale.’

As you can see I now have this really great CopyDoodles border around my coupon. I have my add to cart buttons, the only things that I need to add are my credit card buttons and of course I would need to shift this around a little bit in order to add them on, but I could do that with my move tool. You basically just play around with it and you’ll get a really great button.

The next thing I’m going to show you is how to change one of our BubbleDoodles. So I recently had somebody ask me about this. And they wanted to change the color of the outside of the BubbleDoodles, because right now it’s red and you can’t change it through the CopyDoodles Access Club, but you can very easily change it in GIMP to any color that you like at all. So the first thing that you’re going to want to do before you do this is you’re going to want to delete the center here. And you really simply do that with the fussy select tool. The fussy select tool will select all of one color. So if you have a solid color in something that doesn’t have any gradients, that doesn’t have any shading or anything like that, it will select all of that one solid color. So if I click there and I click in the middle of this BubbleDoodle and press ‘delete,’ as you notice it deletes all of the white.

The reason why I didn’t just click on the red is that our CopyDoodles look so much like an actual marker that they actually do have some shading and some color variations when it comes to the red borders and the red outlines that we have, just so that it looks more realistic, which is why you cannot select all of that item.

So the next thing that I’m going to do is go to ‘Select’ and choose ‘None,’ so that I’m not selecting anything in my document. Finally I go to ‘Colors’ and I choose ‘Colorize’. Colorize allows me to change the color of the only area left in my document, which is the red area. So now you can just play around with this. The saturation, I like to beef it up because it just makes it brighter, it makes it more noticeable.

Then you can really go and move the hue bar to any hue that you like, as you see. So you can do yellow, you have green here, there’s some blues, purple, pink, red. So as you move it the color will change. You can also change the lightness and darkness, if you wanted a black border you would just make it so that there was not lightness, there was a lot of saturation, and you would just kind of play around with it from there. And press ‘OK’.

Now I have the purple bubble that I want, but there’s no white area in there. So, the next thing you’re going to do is click the color tool and just choose ‘white,’ and press ‘OK.’ You’re going to fill your bubble back up, fill up the background so that it’s white and now you can see, and you’ll be able to add in any text that you like, and of course you can add in a CopyDoodles text, you can add in an Arial text, anything that you like and it will have the bubble around it, just make sure that you choose the right size that you want, the correct font, CopyDoodles will show up in GIMP and you choose whatever color you want, because a lot of times you could be typing, like I am right now, and it’s not showing up, that’s because the color is white, and I make this mistake all the time. I’m like, “Where is my color and why can’t I see anything that I’m typing?” That’s because I’m typing in the same color as my background.

It’s really, really simple and easy to change that. And then finally I’m just going to show you how to create a banner ad or an image for your websites. So a lot of you might be putting images in your blog posts, or you might be putting banner ads in there, or you might be putting them on the side of your website, or even this is useful when you’re creating the header of your website, or a footer on your website, because you’re going to want to use GIMP in order to create that.

So last tutorial I showed you how to create this banner, basically I just created some rectangular text boxes, filled them with color, pulled in an image that I liked and then put a bubble on top of that. And then I put a button at the bottom and added in some text. It was really simple to do and from what I showed you on how to create the belcher button you should be able to easily do that.

So today I’m just going to show you how to create this Post-it note banner ad that Mike and I created. And the reason I want to do this is because I want to show you something really cool that you can do with these. So, say you pull in a CopyNote into your area. Now this is really, really large. This is 953 pixels x 942 pixels, and I know that because GIMP gives you your image size right at the top bar here. So I’m going to want to scale my image and instead of me actually scaling my image using the scale image tool, which I was using before, I’m actually just going to type in the width that I want. So, say I know my sidebar is 250 pixels wide. So, I choose 250 and click down and it will automatically resize the height of this item so that it’s very proportionate. Press ‘scale’ and now it rescales and it’s smaller.

I’m going to use my zoom tool and one thing that you might want to note down is that if you want something to fit your whole page and you’re using the zoom tool, all you have to do is click and drag the zoom tool around the location that you want to view and it will automatically put it on your whole page, instead of having to click ‘zoom in,’ ‘zoom in,’ and then it’s too big and then you’re playing around with it, things like that.

Something very cool that you can do with this that I recently found out is you can actually put a filter on this item. Under ‘Distort,’ if you click ‘Filter’ — ‘Distort’ you can actually create a page curl. OK, so this screen will come up and it will ask me where I want my page curl to be. And, I want it to be in the lower right down here, and the curl orientation is vertical. So that’s fine. I press ‘OK,’ and it will automatically curl my page.

Now it looks very dramatic because this is a Post-it note and it doesn’t look correct, but if you do have a large piece of paper, or something like, this will look a lot more realistic than it does on this Post-it note.

And if you want it to look more realistic you actually would need to change your background so that the background, instead of being transparent like this, if it was yellow when it curled up the back of your Post-it note would have been yellow too. So, let me just exit out of that again, pull this in.

I’m just going to really quickly show you how to lay out your banner ad. Say I wanted to it to say ‘Click here,’ like I have right now. I know that this was a red color. I also know that my font was Impact, I’m going to increase the size.

The next thing that I want to add in are my arrows, and I’m just going to drag those in. As you can see these aren’t too big, so I don’t have to resize them very much, but I will have to rotate them. So I’m going to scale them first to be a little bit smaller — ‘Scale.’ And when I rotate, I’m just going to rotate a little bit so that the size fits perfectly. If I wanted to copy this CopyDoodle so that I didn’t have to resize it and everything, all I would do is press the ‘create a duplicate layer’ and it will automatically create another arrow CopyDoodle for me. And I can easily flip it using the flip tool, and clicking on it like that, so every time you click on it, it flips the image. And I’m done.

So now I have two arrows. I would add in my other text for the banner ad underneath this, but I know we don’t have a lot of time. So, I’m just going to show you then how I added in my stamp. I just pulled my stamp in. I just resized my stamp. It will be pretty small, and then I really easily rotated it and placed it on top of all my text that I had typed in.

And like I said you can use CopyDoodles text. So, if I wanted to have this, any CopyDoodles font, I’d choose the color and then I would just choose a CopyDoodles font that I have on my computer. I’d increase the size and I’d play around with it.

So, it’s really simple. Creating all of your items in GIMP basically work the exact way. You’re just going to need to learn how to play around with it. Make sure that you pay attention to your layers. Obviously if I want this stamp to be on top of my text, because right now it’s actually not, I want this to be on top of my text, all I have to do is click on the layer on this side and use the up arrow and it will be on top. It’s basically just a little different than using Word or using Publisher. Instead of bringing to front you have all of your layers viewed right here and it’s a lot easier to play around with it and move them around because you’ll be able to move them to the exact area that you want to be in. Sometimes it can be a little confusing when it comes to using Word.

So at this time if anybody has any questions at all for me about using GIMP or using CopyDoodles in GIMP, feel free to type them in. If not this webinar will hopefully work and the recording will save and you’ll be able to watch the replay, send it over to people.

Thank you, Beverly. I’m glad you enjoyed the webinar.

If you guys have any questions at all I’m always on live chat too. I would be more than happy to walk you through GIMP or any questions, or if you even log-on to live chat at www.copydoodles.com and you really need help and you need me to do a webinar with you, just a personal one really quickly, like ten minutes or something like that, I would be more than happy to help you with it, because I know that this can be very confusing and I want you guys to get the most out of your CopyDoodles Access Club membership and be able to create the coolest stuff without having to hire a graphic designer.

So thank you. Join me in two weeks; Simple and Strategic Off-line Marketing Tips. And today’s webinar replay will be posted at www.copydoodles.com I will post on Facebook when it is up there. So make sure to stay tuned, and thank you for joining me. Happy Spring again to everybody. I hope you’re enjoying this great weather and enjoy the rest of your day!

CopyDoodles Lunch & Learn: “Key Ways to Generate Marketing Ideas.”

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Lunch & Learn Transcript:

Hi everyone! Happy Leap Year. I hope you’re having a fabulous extra day. This week we’re going to be talking about key ways to generate marketing ideas. I feel like I haven’t talked to you guys in so long, because we have our bi-weekly calls now…

A few side notes, if you were on the last Lunch and Learn you will know that I had a lot of trouble recording the GIMP tutorial. And I know that it was very in-depth and a little complicated and I know that a lot of people really wanted to see the replay. So, I’m doing the webinar next week. I’m going to show you how to create a little bit of different pieces as opposed to what we created last time. But if you were on last time, then feel free to join me again. It’d be a great refresher. You know, maybe you can follow along with me this time if you downloaded GIMP. If you weren’t on make sure to attend because GIMP is basically — if you don’t know what it is it’s just like Photoshop, but it’s free. So, you can create some really CopyDoodle pieces, banner ads, buttons for your website, headers, email stuff, really cool stuff in GIMP, so make sure to attend in two weeks.

Today we have our Members Only Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week. So, I want you to leap at the chance to save. You only have two days left in order to get Mike’s Smart Ideas Print Newsletter for only $5. The price is going to go up in two days. And if you checked it out, you probably got the emails on it, so make sure to go back to those emails. I have the link on www.CopyDoodles.com/blog, but it’s a really, really helpful tool, and it’s perfect and it definitely goes along with today’s discussion, which is key ways to generate marketing ideas, because this newsletter will help you generate marketing ideas. You get a template each month, so it basically gives you a done for you marketing idea too, which you can pull. This month I believe it’s St. Patrick’s — really cool stuff that you can use on emails and websites. There’s also a gift certificate template, which has some really exciting different ways you can tweak it and make it look cool — I think that’s what it is.

So, moving on today we’re talking about key ways to generate marketing ideas. Some of these ways you might already be using, and I’m sure and I hope that you already are, but I just wanted to kind of compile different ways that Mike and I come up with marketing ideas and how we do our marketing. If it feels repetitive to you, then I’m sorry, but you should definitely be thinking about these types of things when you’re creating any of your marketing or doing anything in your business.

So, the first thing that we always look at is we look at competitors. We follow them on social media, we get on their mailing lists — not just competitors of CopyDoodles, but other marketers that are out there, other business owners that are out there that are very successful. If you are a brick and mortar store, go into stores not only that you’re your competitors, but stores that are in the same location as you, right down the street from you and see what they’re doing and what they’re doing to bring in business. Also check out pricing because pricing can be a big thing. So, if your competitor’s prices are lower what do you do that is different that gives people reason that your pricing might be higher, but they want to come into your business instead of your competitors?

I’m telling you to steal ideas, at all, like the picture that I have here, but just look at what people are doing. We’re constantly looking at what people are doing.

Also look at people who aren’t in your industry. Look at huge corporations, because they always hit marketing trends right away, like those Old Spice ads that brought in millions of dollars worth of profit for them. What are people doing to get attention and to be different in the marketplace? And a lot of times you can pull ideas from — obviously
Old Spice has millions of dollars to spend on marketing, but you can do this on a smaller scale for your business and you should be thinking about it. So who is forward and innovative? Who has a ton of fans and followers on Facebook, or on Twitter? For example, you might have a company that you admire and really love, but they don’t have a lot of fans and people talking on Facebook, or maybe they’re just not interacting on Facebook, they’re not writing back to people. Maybe they’re not somebody you should be following.

You definitely want to follow someone who has an all around great presence through print media, social media, email, all kinds of things, so make sure you’re following
them — pull phrases, looks at the types of emails that you get from people in your industry and outside of your industry and look at the subject lines and see what subject lines you are more likely to open, think about what subject lines your customers might be more likely to open, then how can you take what another industry is doing and use it in your industry? This is a really great way to get more customers because if you know of an industry that has a younger crowd and you’re trying to attract a younger crowd, what are they doing in order to be successful? And how can you do that and do it in your industry, because your industry might not be doing something like that and you’ll be the one that stands out and looks different, so people are definitely going to be attracted to you, so if you do this before everybody else in your industry, in your niche, then you’re definitely going to stand out.

Definitely look at industries your customers are interested in or potential customers, like I just said, if you’re going for a younger crowd or something like that. But, what are things that your current customers talk about, like, go find your customers on Facebook, see what they’re doing, see what they’re liking, just get a really good idea for what your best customers are interested in and then maybe you can even see the types of industries that they are connected with, the types of businesses that they’re following and you’ll be able to connect with those business in a JV partner-type way in order to grab more attention of those types of customers.

So sometimes it’s more than just marketing, it’s looking outside the box and seeing what your customers, what your potential customers are doing, how people are marketing to them, and then how you can get involved with those companies that might have a larger marketing budget, maybe they put you on their page, maybe you do some cross-promoting, there’s always different avenues that you can turn down.

Junk mail. Definitely save all of your junk mail in a file folder. I don’t care if it’s junk mail that you think is scammy, or if it’s junk mail that you necessarily wouldn’t open, just save it in a file folder, maybe even save it in two file folders — one for junk mail that caught your attention and one for junk mail that didn’t look good, so then when you have to create a direct mail campaign, or even when you’re creating an online campaign or something like that, you can go back to those folders and see what you should do, pull some ideas, pull some layouts from that. Don’t copy it exactly, but kind of pull ideas from it. And then also look at what you shouldn’t do — what didn’t capture your attention? What annoyed you? What didn’t you like? Don’t do that on your mail when you send it out.

You can pull wording, and make sure to look at all of it — lay it all out, see what you like and what you want to do. Sometimes you can pull some really great ideas from this. Mike collects, as you know, if you’ve been following his TV show, he collects swipe file images and things all the time, he’s always collecting different marketing pieces that he receives. So, when he creates a template, maybe like a CopyTemplate or something that you’re using, or even the templates for the Smart Ideas, sometimes those ideas come from a big mass of all of the junk mail that he’s received and he just comes up with different ideas that you can use in order to stand out and be different.

Also look at search engines. Google keywords that your customers may search with. So if you’re selling — let’s say you’re a boutique and you sell clothing, what would your customer search with? Would they search ‘Philadelphia clothing boutique’? So search that and see what companies come up and see why they’re coming up for that and what they’re selling and what their offers are. Also check out the ads that come up on the
right-hand side, because the ads that come up and capture your attention on Google are definitely ads that you should pull words from, pull ideas from, because in Google especially you can only have so many words when you create a Google Ad Words ad, so that could be a perfect subject line for an email, that could be a perfect Facebook ad, if you’re doing any Facebook advertising, or even a Facebook post. Definitely check those out and see what people are doing there.

And also check out your competitors. Google your competitors, see if they have any ads on the sides of the Google that come up that you can tweak. See what your competitors are doing, how their website is laid out, see how they’re emailing people. And then look at it and see how you can be different.

There’s also a really cool tool called the Google Keyword Tool. I just book marked it, but if you just google ‘Google keyword tool’ it will come up. It will be like the first search. And what you do is, if you’ve never used this before, is it will tell you how many people using Google search for certain keywords per month. So, say I was typing in ‘marketing results’ or ‘increase marketing results’. So as you can see nobody is searching for ‘increase marketing results’, that the first item that comes up. But, if I scroll down I can see that people are searching for similar terms. They’re looking for increase in web traffic. They’re looking for direct mail agencies. They’re looking for increases in marketing. So these are just the types of keywords then that you want to take and put into all of your marketing. You definitely want to put these keywords on your website because people are searching for them. But, make sure when you look at this that you’re looking at global monthly searches, because that means that search engine results, 368,000 people are searching for that keyword per month, whereas ‘improving website traffic’ only 1,900 are searching for something like that. So if I click global monthly searches it will actually show me the highest amount of monthly on all of these items and then it will go down to the lowest.

So if you type in keywords for your business, you can pull up keywords that might be a little more relevant, just by how many people are searching for it. It will give you a good idea of what people are thinking when they’re looking for you, looking for your business, and what people are thinking when they receiving marketing from you. So, maybe ‘increase marketing results’ might not be a great thing to put on the outside of an envelope, or it might not be a great subject line, but ‘how to increase sales’ might be a lot better — it’s easier, simpler to read and people are searching for it, it may be that your customers are searching for it too. So you can definitely pull from that.

Then also look in forums. If you google a lot of times different forums will come up. Maybe if you’re in a certain niche or you’re in a certain industry you know of different forums that people will go on, maybe it’s a Yahoo question forum, or it’s just a forum that just pops up out of nowhere that people are on and they’re talking about — even on Amazon you can see reviews of different products and people comment back and forth to each other. Look in all of these places and see what people need help with, what they’re asking questions about. And look at the way they talk and the way that they type, because you want to talk to them exactly like they talk to everybody else in the forums. Obviously, you’re not going to use the slang verbiage that they use. But, if you see what people need help with, maybe you can easily tweak your marketing very slightly to respond to that need.

If a lot of people are really worried and they can’t find your skincare company and they can’t find skincare to help with a certain type of acne and you know that you have this natural skincare that people are looking for that would be perfect, not only, you know, answer in the forum and let people know about it, without being too spammy and scammy, but maybe there’s a really great market for that one product and you should do a small marketing campaign for it, for people in a certain age range, location, whatever it is that are looking the forum, that could be a great way to start a new campaign.

Also watch online TV shows. Online TV shows are a great way to get information, they’re a great way to come up with different marketing ideas. TED TV is really fun if you’ve never been on it, and I hope that you have. If you’ve at least heard of it, if you’re a business owner, it has a lot of really great presentations from successful business people that give you innovation and motivation, and a lot of times they give you really quirky and cool different ways that you can tweak your marketing and different ideas.

Mike Capuzzi’s 3 in 3. He doesn’t do the 3 in 3 shows anymore, but we still have all of the past shows at www.MikeCapuzzi.tv and if you’ve never seen any of the shows, this is a great time to go back and look at it and see the different types of ideas that you can come up with. Also CopyDoodles TV, we do still have some new shows all the time. So, make sure that out regularly, and check out past CopyDoodles TVs, even if you’ve seen them before, you might come up with new ideas and look at them with fresh eyes and you might come up with different ways that you can tweak your marketing.

The Busy Buzz for Women Entrepreneurs — check that out. There’s always some pretty cool marketing ideas.

Marie Forleo also has a really great Q&A TV sessions, mostly geared towards women, but it can definitely help you with some questions you might have about your business.

Andrew Locke has Help My business.

And No BS Live, they don’t produce their TV show anymore either, but definitely check out their past episodes, because there’s a lot of really great marketing ideas that you can pull from, that you can use.

And then finally, I didn’t mean for this to turn out to be kind of salesy at the very end, but if you don’t have the Smart Ideas Print newsletter and you’re looking for some ideas, even if it’s just for March, then pick it up. It’s only $5. Try it out. Check it out. There’s a lot of really great marketing ideas in there that you can pull from, especially if you don’t have the time or you don’t have somebody on your team that has the time, you can definitely pull from there.

I know this week’s webinar was short, but does anybody have an Q&A? Any questions for me, whether it is for this webinar or any CopyDoodles questions?

The next topic in two weeks will be Creating Better Than Ever CopyDoodles Pieces in GIMP, so make sure to join me there. And, then today’s webinar, the replay will be at www.copydoodles.com, as long as it doesn’t delete like last week’s. So, make sure to stayed tuned for it.

Thank you for joining me and I will see you guys in two weeks where we’ll be talking about GIMP. If anybody has any questions afterwards you can find me on live chat. Have a great day.