by Scott Howard | Jan 13, 2016 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Today a quick rundown of the advertising options I offer to Fort Wayne area business people. As many of you know, I work for WOWO Radio and Federated Media. 
But what you don’t know is the complete list of advertising solutions that I can offer.
Some involve WOWO and some are completely independent of WOWO Radio.
Starting with the basics: 
- advertising on WOWO radio in the form of commercials that are 60 seconds or less and are pre-recorded.
- advertising on WOWO radio with Live commercials that are 60 seconds and carry the added endorsement of our WOWO hosts Charly Butcher, Pat Miller and others.
- advertising on WOWO radio with embedded sponsorship mentions that are 10 seconds long and are live during our prime time radio shows.
- advertising on WOWO radio with special features that we create just for you.
Expanding on the basics with WOWO:
- live remote broadcasts from your location of a radio show on WOWO
- live remote call-in commercials from your location
- advertising to listeners to WOWO Radio’s digital audience, those that listen to our streaming services on their computer, or mobile device hear different ads than what listeners hear when listening to WOWO 1190AM and 107.5FM
- advertising messages placed on our website at WOWO.com
- advertising messages reaching our social media followers on Facebook and Twitter
- email campaigns that can be targeted to listeners to just WOWO or include our entire Fort Wayne area database that includes listeners to our other Fort Wayne radio stations
- embedded ads in the WOWO NewsTracker video on YouTube that is shared on social media and our website.
- participation in the events that WOWO hosts thru our Federated Entertainment division which will include two more job fairs in 2016
- advertising messages sent via text sponsorships of various opt-in text services for our listeners
Besides WOWO Radio, I also offer many of the same advertising solutions for our local ESPN sports stations.
Beyond WOWO Radio, I have plenty of Digital Marketing options from our Federated Digital Solutions division.This year I have advertising partners that are not using WOWO Radio, just our digital solutions. I have an entire team of professionals that work hand in hand with me to create the very best: 
- responsive website design and development along with Search Engine Optimization.
- lead generation solutions including Search Engine Marketing commonly known as S.E.M. and P.P.C. drive customers from sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo to you.
- the very latest Custom Audience Targeting that uses display ads to qualified people to keep your message in front of them in a very technologically sophisticated manner.
- similar to Custom Audience Targeting with display ads, I can also handle your Video Audience Targeting which plays your video ads to qualified people.
- reputation management and Social Media Engagement services that will include the most appropriate social platforms for your business.
As you look at this list of advertising options, it could be overwhelming unless you are a marketing director of a major company. But that’s where I come in.
Instead of asking you what you want to buy, I work hand in hand with you to determine what we need to accomplish.
Then, I will work with you to see which of these advertising and marketing options are the best for you and your business now, and which ones we should also consider in the future.
You don’t need to know the ins and outs, pros and cons of all of these options. Use me as a resource and we’ll help you get to where you want to go in 2016.
by Scott Howard | Nov 13, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Web World, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Tuesday I was meeting with an advertising partner and were we looking at some data I gathered from Google Analytics.
Not sure what Google Analytics is? Take a look at their site. Or I can give you a layman’s overviews.
Google Analytics is a free service from Google that you install on your website that can tell you all kinds of things about people who visit your website. What pages they visit, when they visit, where they came from, and so much more. If you sell stuff on your website, you can track it too. Just take my word for it…install Google Analytics on your website now.
Back to my meeting on Tuesday. This advertising partner has a website but we are not doing any digital online marketing for him, yet. We just helped him set up Google Analytics 2 months ago. That’s when we tripled his radio advertising.
I see you scratching your head. Hang on.
We are actually tracking the response to his radio ads with Google Analytics.
How? The call to action in his radio ads is to visit his website. No phone number, no storefront, just his website.
WOWO radio has been his sole source of advertising since May. He previously did some newspaper and some targeted direct mail and those methods worked for him, but not to the degree that advertising on WOWO has worked this year.
When I showed him some of the findings that I discovered with Google Analytics, he was very happy and wanted to know more. So next month when we meet, I’ll share with him more information about people visiting his website. We both recognize that there are some limitations to any tracking system so he is also asking people how they found him and is tracking those responses as well.
Unlike some people who sell advertising, I want to know as much as possible about the effectiveness. I want to work hand in hand with you to make sure the money you are spending is an investment, not an expense. We’ll talk more about that next week.
by Scott Howard | Oct 28, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo
Your reputation matters. It always has. Even before social media and the entire web.
People will talk about you, good or bad. Look at this survey:
This world wide survey shows that if you and your company provide a good job, more than half will tell friends and family about you. Less than 20% would share it on social media. (I don’t have the data but when someone screws up, people can get very vocal on social media.)
Just because you don’t hear about it directly (21% in the above chart), people are talking about you. We call it Word Of Mouth when it’s good. And when they are talking bad about you, we call that your worst marketing nightmare.
Give this some thoughtful consideration and if you need help, reach out to me.
by Scott Howard | Oct 27, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Fort Wayne, ScLoHo's Web World, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard
Search Engine Optimization. It’s been a “thing” since 1997 according to Wikipedia.
Here’s the basic premise. The Internet has close to 1,000,000,000 websites right now. How in this World Wide Web is anyone going to find yours?
Directories were created and that was okay for awhile then this company called Google came along and developed an easy to use simple way to find stuff online. The modern Search Engine was born and by the end of 1998, techies were praising Google.com:
“PC Magazine” reports that Google “has an uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results” and recognizes us as the search engine of choice in the Top 100 Web Sites for 1998.
Jump ahead 10 years to 2008 and I’m telling some of my radio clients that they need to blog regularly. At least once a month, but once a week is better. At this time, I’ve plunged myself into the blog world with over 3,000 articles I published on my own blogs that year alone, on a part-time basis.
The blog articles I was writing and sharing were being picked up by Google. Let me explain. If someone was to do a Google search for something I wrote about, I occasionally would appear on the first or second page of Google. Now Google is much more sophisticated these days and there are companies that specialize in optimizing websites for Google which still has over 65% of the search engine use market worldwide. Bing is #2 with around 20% of the market.
When I launched this website four years ago this month, I worked for Cirrus ABS, a website development firm in Fort Wayne and learned a lot of stuff I could be doing S.E.O.-wise for this site, but I didn’t. I was too busy working at my paid job and writing articles on the side to take the time to add those extras to my articles.
Time Travel with me to December 2013, about 23 months ago. That’s when I returned to radio to work at WOWO. I was given permission from management to write about WOWO and radio and advertising and marketing and just about anything I wanted because they trusted me.
As I went about my work at WOWO as an advertising sales person who prefers to offer advertising and marketing consulting 1st before the selling part of my job, I started writing about my experiences with WOWO radio and recently I noticed a trend.
People were paying attention. Mary, whom I’ve known for a few years was recommending articles I wrote to her clients. But this month in particular, I was getting phone calls, text messages and emails to my ScLoHo email account from strangers wanting my help with advertising, marketing and some were specifically wanting to advertise on WOWO. It was time to do some research.
I cleared my cookies and browser history and did a search for WOWO Advertise and was pleasantly surprised.
7 of the Top 10 Google Listings pointed to ScottHoward.me
The first three listings linked to our company website at WOWO.com But the rest all went directly to articles that I wrote over the past 22 months.
I sent a note and screenshot to my friend Kevin Mullett at Cirrus ABS who decided to investigate further wrote back, Maybe even more impressive. “radio advertising fort wayne” “fort wayne radio advertising” “fort wayne radio” incognito. Depends on how people are searching.
This is what I call the power of Accidental SEO. I almost called it lazy SEO but that’s not really what happened because I haven’t been lazy. I write and publish 5 articles each and every week on this website/blog. Many of them, but not all mention WOWO. That’s not being lazy, that’s being diligent.
The reason I called it Accidental SEO is because I didn’t add all the extra tags and metadata that would help Google find me and boost my results. I just wrote a blog and didn’t stop.
Maybe what I have done isn’t duplicate-able by you. Maybe it is. You’ll never know until you start and don’t stop.
If you want to be found online in a more purposeful way, I can help you with that with the services of the Federated Digital Solutions division of company. Contact me and we will see what is the best path for you.
by Scott Howard | Sep 22, 2015 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Media, ScLoHo's Web World
Creating an online personal brand is a mystery to many people. That includes me. Except after 10+ years I have some insight that I can share. 
First off, each of us has a personal brand. A personal brand is simply an identity, not necessarily one that you create for yourself, but what people think of when they think of you.
Take a second and read that again: A personal brand is simply an identity, not necessarily one that you create for yourself, but what people think of when they think of you.
For those of us who are old enough to have had a life before the internet, we had very little control of this. Do something crazy, something stupid, something heroic, and someone labels you with a nickname. That nickname became your personal brand, among those that knew you at the time.
Online you have more control because you get to decide what to share. You can even create a new nickname. That’s how ScLoHo began.
Actually ScLoHo started as an alternative to my given name, Scott Howard when I was setting up an email account on Yahoo! years ago. I started using ScLoHo also when I began blogging and carried it over to all my online accounts.
Enough history, on to what I do now.
5 days a week, I publish an article on my own website which is where you are reading this right now.
I have the wordpress plugin Jetpack that will autopost these daily updates to my Twitter account and to my personal Facebook page. I also have them autoposting to my two Google+ Accounts. This is the primary method I am currently using to share content that I write.
But there is more.
I hand select certain updates from this site to share on LinkedIn.
However, (and this is important): I share more than just my stuff on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
My Facebook account also has stuff from others and personal stuff that is original.
I fill my Twitter feed with all kinds of stuff from others including articles and stories that may be controversial. I am tweeting at least 10 times daily, but I use the buffer app to autotweet most of these Tweets. That way I have a real life that is not tied to the computer or my phone. I subscribe to a few newsletters that send me links to stories that I am often interested it and those are often the links that get buffered.
I avoid political talk on social media. Too much risk of offending others for no good reason. I will not shy away from my Christian beliefs. But I would rather live them then preach them. There is a verse in James that I try and follow regarding this.
I listen, at least I try to.
Responding is critical.
If someone comments on something you have posted, shared or said online, please reply.
Also comment and share with others on their stuff too.
A few more random but important thoughts:
- I still believe in blogging. At one time I was posting over 30 articles a week. Now I do 5. That’s 5 articles every week, 52 weeks a year. Some of the people who read what I post are not in the United States and don’t observe the same holidays we do.
- I do not write articles every day. I write in batches. I schedule in advance. I wrote this article while sitting in a coffee shop on Labor Day weekend a couple weeks ago. I have some articles scheduled months ahead of time. (There will probably be fresh articles appear after I die, which is weird.)
- Share more than once on Twitter. I follow around 1000 people on Twitter and have 3700 following me. I don’t see every tweet because I have a life that doesn’t involve staring at my Twitter feed. Share your content on Twitter at different times on different days to get more exposure to more people. Unless you only have 30 followers.
- Join Groups. Facebook and LinkedIn has groups you can join. Or create your own and invite others to join you. A friend of mine started a Facebook group in Fort Wayne to match employers with career and job seekers. In less than 6 months he has over 6,000 members. And it is helping people get jobs that need work.
- Be yourself but filter yourself too. You should know what this means but let me help. If you would not want your minister, mom or grandpa to see or hear what you share, then think twice before you share.
Even though I was honored this year again with an award for blogging, I didn’t jump online a dozen years ago to become an expert in any of this. Yet there are some who think of me as an expert. (I reply to them that an expert is a former pert). I just started doing this and never stopped. I learned from others and continue to learn. I know there are somethings I could do better but this is just a portion of my life. Have any thoughts or questions? Tell or ask.
Besides WOWO Radio, I also offer many of the same advertising solutions for our local ESPN sports stations.
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