Krystal Loh - Express Writers
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Krystal Loh

12 Days of Christmas Infographic (Original Short)

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12 Days of Christmas Infographic (Original Short)

12 Days of Christmas (Lyrics) On the twelve days of Christmas, Express Writers gave to me: 12 writers writing 11 editors editing 10 bloggers blogging 9 killer keywords 8 e-books emailed 7 slides a slingin’ 6 creative copy 5 social media po—sts! 4 graphics pushed 3 profiles penned 2 deadlines crushed …and a widely shared creative story! Merry Christmas, from ALL of us at Express Writers! Need creative copy for your next project? Krystal, the author of this fun piece, is a creative copywriter in our team. Get in touch about your projects!

Cool Brand Content Spotlight: How Denny’s Wins at Social Media

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Cool Brand Content Spotlight: How Denny’s Wins at Social Media

We need to talk about Denny’s. I’m from New York City. Born here, raised here, still here, and will probably die here. If you’re from the New York tri-state area, you know that diners are a dime a dozen. I’ve only been to one Denny’s, and I think it was in Oregon. So why, might you ask, do I care about Denny’s? Cool Brand Content Spotlight: How Denny’s Wins at Social Media putting your foot in your mouth? bad. putting your foot in a pie? amazing. — Denny’s (@DennysDiner) November 17, 2016 That’s why Denny’s is unlike any other social media account I’ve ever encountered. They don’t actually promote any of their food on a regular basis. In fact, it’s a rare occurrence. They’ll throw in some tweets about… foodstuffs. Food that’s on their menu – sometimes. Bottom line: it’s unpredictable. When I first came upon this social media presence a year ago, I had no idea how or why their marketing team had chosen this approach. That confusion was short-lived. Because a year later, I still think about Denny’s tweets and share them with my friends. really hoping Lucille is just gonna crack some eggs tonight — Denny’s (@DennysDiner) October 24, 2016 Where else can you get lowercase quips about The Walking Dead with a reference to food? In some ways, it’s impossible to describe how these tweets make me feel. It’s akin to stumbling upon scrupulous spam like @Horse_ebooks: Not only that, but whether you believe it (or want to believe it) the car salesmen will continue to laugh — Horse ebooks (@Horse_ebooks) September 16, 2013 Or an account like @dril: i got lock jaw from eating pasta out of a dogbowl and my wife will be here in 2 hours to marry me. help me github — wint (@dril) November 2, 2016 Weeks later and I’m still laughing at that tweet. This sort of social media posting is like a free-association experiment. I’ve no doubt in my mind that whoever runs their social media was around for the birth of You’re the Man Now, Dog and 4chan. My people. What Denny’s Does Right: Niche Content Audience-ing That being said, Denny’s is clearly targeting Millennials and Gen X’ers. I’m still not sure which one of these I belong to; though for the sake of my ego I’ll go with Gen X. We were around for the birth of memes, both creating them and sharing them. Moot was a household name for us (I had the odd honor of working with him professionally many years later in Manhattan — touche!), and may or may not have (almost) failed out of college because of late night raids in World of Warcraft. Denny’s knows this demographic. They know quirky memes and they embrace the randomness that certain niches of the internet also embrace, even desperately fall in love with. Who needs proper grammar and punctuation? Not Denny’s. They win because they make your brain associate good feelings with their product. Let’s call it the Meme Sensation. It’s that instant gratification that you feel when you find a great meme. It makes you chuckle, makes you hit the little Retweet arrow, or copypaste it into your Facebook Messenger group chat. In Denny’s case, their social media makes you want to join their business’ culture, not necessarily hook you in with their food. You’re investing in the brand, which in Denny’s’ case, is a weird world of puns and run on sentences. It’s how we (my generation, the just-turning-thirty-year-olds) talk when we’re really excited about something. You know, caps lock is cruise control for cool. So when you RT that weird tweet about eggs or how scared of Negan we all are, you associate it with Denny’s. It’s a brand new world of marketing, akin to getting jingles stuck in your mind – only this time, it’s something entirely different. Denny’s embraces the randomness that certain niches of the internet embrace, even fall in love with. Who needs proper grammar and punctuation? Not Denny’s. And yet, it’s still highly unique and marketable. What Denny’s Needs To Work On Pet peeve alert! Despite how quotable Denny’s is, the fact is they don’t seem to engage with their customers. I talked about my great interaction with @PenguinRandomHouse in an earlier blog. Interaction like this would only further cement their fans’ loyalty. We are all attention-starved on social media, after all. For instance, Denny’s passed up a perfect opportunity to get involved in some great, free marketing. Widely popular webseries @GameGrumps (SHOUTOUT TO MY OLD FRIEND @egoraptor) engaged in exactly the kind of random quirky banter with a bunch of food chains’ social media, and Denny’s missed the mark and never replied: hey @DennysDiner are you guys doing anything tonight? we’re free to hang but don’t tell @Applebees or @Chilis, they might get jealous — Game Grumps (@GameGrumps) March 2, 2016 This thread is absolute gold, by the way. I highly recommend checking it out. Conclusion Honestly? I don’t know if I’ll ever go out of my way to go to a Denny’s while I’m at home. But if I’m outside of NYC and need American comfort food, their tweets will definitely come to mind. They’re tapping into an unconscious need to laugh at random stuff that your parents wouldn’t even begin to understand. The stuff you find yourself remembering and laughing about on the toilet at 3am. The difference? It’s connected to a company. And it’s 3am. Guess who’s open at 3am?

Your Guide to Social Advertising Basics: How to Get Traction, Succeed & Gain Attention on Social Media

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Your Guide to Social Advertising Basics: How to Get Traction, Succeed & Gain Attention on Social Media

Krystal is a Social Media Expert at Express Writers. REALITY CHECK! It’s 2016. If you have a pulse, you’ll know that door-to-door salesmen aren’t around anymore. We’ve all become proverbial Biff Lomans, haven’t we? And yet, once we follow our dreams and get our businesses up and running… we realize that the old way of doing things is dead. Whenever I see company reps standing on street corners trying to pitch their newest subscription-based products, I wonder what the turnaround is for that. Don’t they know? This is the age of social media! It’s faster and more effective to get your message out with RTs and shares than leaving some poor young man dressed in an apron on the street, hawking down college students. (If I sound bitter, it’s because I am. But I digress.) I’m online. You’re online. Our dads and cousins and people we knew in elementary school are online, consuming products and services and letting their social circles know about awesome experiences they’ve had with company X, Y, and Z. It’s the age of social advertising, where your customers are your greatest marketing tool. If you have great, shareable content, and know an effective way of pushing it out, the rest of the work is pretty much done for you. Of course, if it were as simple as that, I wouldn’t need to write this blog post guide for you. Social media is more than just the sum of its parts — you need to know how to manipulate those parts to your advantage. That means understanding how each social media platform comes into play when you’re trying to reach a specific audience, whether it means changing your tone for that platform or adding/omitting a platform, depending on who you’re trying to reach. Think about who uses social media in your life. If you’re a social media professional, chances are you use social media in your personal life. What do people always say? Oh yeah, some complaint about their mom seeing a post they made on Facebook. And do you know why? Moms are on Facebook! (and dads, too.) From personal experience, my mom got as far as setting up a Twitter account and stopped there. I’m all about using intuition when it comes to social media advertising, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a frame of understanding about each of the top three social media platforms. Social Advertising Basics 101: How to Get Business Traction, Succeed & Win on Social Media Let’s start by looking at how to use my three favorite (and the top hottest) platforms to work with as a social media manager: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Organic, real-people-friendly tips here only! 1. How To Succeed On Twitter It’s true: Twitter is the cool kids’ table  In my private social media presence, Twitter definitely feels like the cool kids’ playground table. Indeed, the majority of Twitter users are from urban areas. It’s where I hang out with celebs, complain to airlines about my 4 hour delay, and lose my geek mind over social media presences like Arby’s as they make nerdy video game references that touch my very heart and soul. @penguinrandom this reminds me of RPing in AOL chatrooms in the old days. — ざわ‥ (@pseudomachine) August 25, 2016 @pseudomachine we find ourselves Rhy’din those waves of nostalgia too sometimes. — Penguin Random House (@penguinrandom) August 25, 2016 @penguinrandom (that totally made my day, thank you) — ざわ‥ (@pseudomachine) August 25, 2016 Awesome to see the humans behind the big businesses. (They’re nerds just like me) Twitter is instant gratification, and instant reach With the instantaneous nature of gratification and reach in mind, as a marketer, you want to keep some of these same perks in mind when you’re trying to use Twitter to your advantage. Use Twitter to connect to your industry in a fast and productive way; it’s also an easy way to learn who follows who in what ever niche community you and your business belongs to. Or, you could be playful and engage over businesses and customers in friendly banter. I see it all the time from very well known businesses (especially in the book industry — I’m looking at you and your book banter, Penguin Random House!) Twitter facilitates fast-paced conversations But doesn’t Facebook provide the same sort of interaction, you ask? On the contrary! Twitter is like having a conversation, whereas Facebook can sometimes seem more like forum posting. People refer back to Facebook statuses for information and conversation, whereas Twitter is much more fast-paced. Want to be hot on Twitter? Build your own chat With Twitter, you can even start your own hashtag chats easily amongst those in the industry, whether it is other companies or customers/fans (or future customers!). Chances are, the followers of the people engaging in your chat are going to take note of those hashtag remarks and may poke their heads into the conversation to see what’s going on. Bam! A new follower of your brand is born. Join a few chats (we have a list of 25 on Social Media Examiner, and our own #ContentWritingChat hosted by @ExpWriters)—and then consider being a cool brand that starts their own! Want some inspiration? Check out Applebee’s or Corner Bakery Café and see what they’re doing on Twitter—it’s genius. 2. How to Succeed on Facebook Be about them, not you Facebook is a different audience and a different culture of communication than Twitter. While Facebook’s user base is largely adults, the volume of user total as a whole is staggering. You want to make use of all of those users out there and be a responsible Facebook poster. That means posting conversationally. Remember — you want to get your information out there, but you don’t want to sound like a commercial spam bot. You want to have a conversation with your audience in a singular space, and that’s your status for the day. Engagement isn’t as high as other platforms For the most part, … Read more

How to Become a Social Media Manager: A Day in the Life of One, from Krystal

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How to Become a Social Media Manager: A Day in the Life of One, from Krystal

Ever wanted to learn how to become a social media manager, or what it’s like being one? Krystal, one of our talented client social media managers, is guest blogging today with her thoughts on the subject. Plus, she’s sharing a look at her day, writing and creating social posts for our client base. Enjoy! I grew up on the Internet. No, seriously. If you knew me up until college, you knew me as the shy, quiet, artsy anime/video games nerd that had some good ideas, but wasn’t very effective in communicating them. That is, unless we were friends online. Text role play, fanfic writing, and managing online communities was how I got out of my shell and found my writer’s voice. It was a way to communicate that didn’t always flow as freely in person. I learned how to manage folks on MMOs and do customer service via email. These types of things were done for leisure, naturally. I was always a reader and a lover of fiction, but when I started working for an indie bookstore, I was reading ten books a month and bridging the gap between having an online personality and communicating with bookstore patrons in person. Now how, might you ask, did this culminate in becoming a social media manager? How to Become a Social Media Manager: Krystal’s Starting Roots Reading and writing have always been my pillars. I used to do more Fine Arts (I even had a brief stint in art school), but I found that I couldn’t communicate with my paintings and photos as deeply as I could with words. This became apparent to me as I started becoming engaged in online communities such as LiveJournal and managing big raids in World of Warcraft and really excelled at connecting with users and empathizing with them. You learn how to communicate with people in a whole new way, using persuasive and subtle language to create a sense of a virtual community. No matter what online platform I’m on, that’s what I strive to do – create a community, whether it’s with fellow nerds or customers I’m trying to reach out to. It’s like calling a hotline and having to speak to a computer. That’s bad social media. Good social media is connecting with the user on the other end. Great social media is getting them to laugh at the screen and look forward to your tweets or status updates. You want to feel like the person on the other side of the screen is your confidante, ready to answer your questions and guide you in the right direction, whether it’s helping you figure out why your flight was delayed or which ice cream is the hot flavor of the month. Being a Good Social Media Manager is All About Great Research and Writing Of course, there’s more to social media than just being a solid communicator. You have to love research. Having a degree in Applied Psychology, I’m used to spending hours, days, even weeks doing research on one topic. My biggest hurdle when I first started writing copy for social media professionally was getting used to writing copy for topics that I knew nothing about, or –let’s face it—topics I couldn’t care less about. A Day in the Life: Writing for Typical Subjects Can be Fun! But the beauty of loving research and writing is that, in general, you most likely love to learn. This was an unexpected perk when I joined up with the great folks at Express Writers. I was getting clients that were connected to products like luxury vehicles, RVs, beds, and real estate litigation. I happen to own a bed, but otherwise I don’t know anything about any of those. I was pleasantly surprised by how fun it was to research the kind of content that their customers wanted to see, Googling all sorts of articles and such to get people excited about RV safety. Who knew! As long as you check your sources and make sure they’re legit, you can find some awesome content out there. I keep a word document of all the websites I’ve found to be useful depending on the subject, just so I can revisit the ones I know will give me great content if I need to. Tip: Be Conversational in Your Writing Style Then, I get the information out there as if I’m having a conversation with someone. Even if a client wants the tone of the copy to be professional, I try to give it my own personal spin so that every tweet feels like a greeting, a first impression between strangers. I can talk a lot about keywords and SEO, which are all essential in the most fundamental ways, but once you’ve drawn in your customers with the right algorithm, you need to keep them hooked with your personality. This is of course true with actual face-to-face interactions, but when information is flying at users on their Timelines or Dashboards. This is what I love about being a social media manager. It’s the ultimate social experiment of the human condition, only way more fun and interactive than anything you’d read in a textbook! 4 Tips to Share on How to Become a Social Media Manager That’s Worth Their Salt TL;DR, right? Well, I’ve zeroed in on some tips that I think you’ll find useful if you’re thinking of getting involved in the professional social media world: 1. Keep Reading Seriously. Whether its articles online, novels, or even episodic video games – keep yourself immersed in some form of literature, whether it’s Dostoevsky, Murakami , or That-Indie-Graphic-Novel-That-You-Wish-Other-People-Read,-Too. It makes you a better, savvier writer overall and keeps your noodle engaged with language. Draw on the voices in literature to help you cultivate your own. It’s important to do, even if you only have 140 characters to show it. The same goes for writing. If you get an itch to write a little story, poem, or blog, scratch it. 2. Stay Connected to Social Media This is related … Read more

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