The job of a project manager is to act as a mediator between an agency and its clients and keep the agency on track with tasks. Building a reserve of useful tools and skills is important in project management because it can be fast-paced and overwhelming at times. These are a few of the project management tools and skills we find particularly useful here at Boxcar.
At least once a week, the entire Boxcar team gets together to go over responsibilities and timing of each and every project our agency is responsible for. We have a giant whiteboard that outlines clients, projects, and who is responsible for each project. Having regular regroups allows the entire team to be on the same page and hold each other accountable. Plus, it keeps our agency running efficiently.
Boxcar uses a server that holds all project assets. This is a great way to make sure the whole team has access to materials they may need. It’s also helpful for storing old assets that might need to be referenced in later projects with clients we frequently work with.
Basecamp is another crucial project management tool we use at Boxcar. This is essentially a digital version of our giant whiteboard. It includes a calendar, to-do lists, and agency-wide messages. Using Basecamp helps us keep the entire team accountable and on-task.
One of the biggest perks of using Basecamp is the ability to easily share information with clients without having to create lengthy and complicated email threads. Since project managers spend most of their time communicating with clients or team members, Basecamp is particularly helpful.
Project managers need to know every detail about the projects they’re responsible for, and they also need to be capable of clearly communicating these details in fast-paced or high-stress situations. Boxcar’s project management team constantly works to better our ability to assess details and see all aspects of a project. We also double check and proofread completed work with more than one member of the project management team so nothing slips through the cracks.
While often overlooked in favor of high-tech solutions, a calendar and to-do list are incredibly helpful tools for project managers. In addition to their own deadlines, project managers keep track of other team members’ deadlines. Keeping a calendar and detailed to-do lists make all of these responsibilities manageable.
Being a project manager is fulfilling and fun, if challenging at times. Being equipped with a well-stocked toolkit and valuable skills, however, keeps the agency running smoothly and decreases stress and unnecessary challenges.
Many small businesses run into roadblocks when it comes to social media. As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, managing social media is no small task. To those who don’t work in a field that relies on it, social media can seem like a no-brainer. In actuality, however, it requires meticulous planning and dedication to manage daily social media posts and execute quality campaigns. Additionally, small businesses don’t have access to the same resources that larger businesses do, so it can be a challenge to cultivate a thriving social media presence. Boxcar seeks to avoid these issues by sharing social media content creation duties with the whole team.
The social media campaign we launched this week achieves just that. These weekly videos highlight Boxcar’s culture, show off our expertise, and allow our social media audience to see all of Boxcar — not just the social media manager. This project started off in one of our weekly regroups when I asked everyone to send me three facts about their job, three tools they use, or three things they love about working at Boxcar. After receiving all of this information, I set up a schedule to stay on track with the filming and posting of these videos.
The specific goals of this campaign are to increase our social media audience and showcase our talents. Since we are a small business, building an audience isn’t the easiest task in the world. Bigger businesses and brands already have a certain level of recognition and influence that rakes in likes, follows, and retweets. Small businesses, on the other hand, need to give social media users a little push in the right direction. It’s vital that each of our social media posts pack a punch and get followers engaged, and this campaign is tailored to do just that by delivering interesting, bite-sized videos that make the viewer want to learn more about Boxcar. Everyone on our team has something stellar to offer, so we need to make sure we’re showing the rest of the world just how awesome we are. Little video snippets are the perfect way to exhibit our expertise and let our dazzling personalities shine through.
Luckily, this campaign doesn’t require any of us to invest hours and hours. Low-maintenance campaigns are perfect for small businesses like Boxcar, because they allow us to reap maximum social benefits without spreading ourselves too thin. Campaigns like this aren’t too much of a hassle to execute because they can be done quickly and the weight of the project can be shared among team members. Even during hectic weeks, the campaign will still be easily executed.
You can check out this campaign on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Copywriting is a highly particular type of writing that requires a great deal of thought and precision to create effective work. Many writers are enchanted by the idea of being a copywriter. After all, your work will be widely circulated, and you’ll get the opportunity to produce a ton of content. In my time at Boxcar, I’ve found a couple of key differences between writing copy and writing any other type of communication.
Digital interactions are fast-paced, so the job of the advertiser is to quickly catch the attention of a consumer and engage with them. The digital space is not the appropriate arena to use lofty, superfluous language and appeal to consumers’ deep-seated emotions, beliefs, or convictions. Copywriters have only a few seconds to catch the attention of their audience, so copy must be quickly and easily understood.
Due to the fast pace of the digital landscape, digital advertising is not the place to show off how impressive your personal lexicon is. Because the primary goals of copy are to clearly communicate a message and move the consumer to act on that message, writing must be clear and direct. If you like writing because you like the art and poetics of language, copywriting might not be the type of writing for you, since it requires you to utilize precise and direct language. One of the projects I was recently included on was a banner project. Most of the copy I wrote for this project was a bit excessive. Once I saw it written on a banner, I understood what the rest of the team meant when they said it looked “copy-heavy.” Long words and lengthy call to actions don’t fare well in media that is meant to be consumed quickly.
The phrase “call to action” (or CTA) is tossed around quite a bit by advertisers and marketers. “Call to action” refers to the section of copy that calls the reader, viewer, or listener to perform an action, whether that’s buying a product, clicking a banner, or liking a Facebook post. Without a clear and effective call to action, digital ads don’t work.
Clearly, copywriting is distinct from every other form of writing in that it requires a writer to be remarkably precise and versatile. Sometimes a copywriter will need to utilize purely technical terminology and other times will need to appeal to more abstract ideas while still using succinct, down-to-earth language. Because of these differences, the copywriter is required to engage in mental and creative acrobatics in ways that other creative writers do not.
If you’re new to search marketing like me, the big, wide world of SEO can seem impossibly daunting and confusing. The vernacular is highly specific, search engines are constantly updating, and it’s easy to become lost in all the details. This week’s Boxcar blog is here to cover the absolute basics of SEO to help you establish a solid footing from which to move forward.
SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. The goal of SEO is to have your webpage rank higher on a search engine results page (also referred to as a SERP). SEO works because search engines crawl the internet to find particular keywords, rank them, then store this information in databases. The search engines recall this stored information whenever a query is entered into the engine.
SEO is important because it provides targeted traffic. If your site isn’t optimized, your audience might not be able to find it. This is a disservice both to your potential customers and your business, especially if you’re good at what you do. When your site isn’t optimized, your audience can’t find you, and you don’t get a chance to show off your awesome professional skills.
Two of the most basic elements of SEO are keywords and links. Keywords are the words used in a search query that direct the searcher to sites relevant to their needs. A bookstore’s keywords might include “books,” “young adult fiction,” and “existential philosophy texts,” whereas an advertiser or marketer’s website will likely include keywords such as “digital advertising,” “marketing strategy,” or “digital design.” If someone is looking to find coffee table books, a search for only “books” will yield a ton of results. If the searcher narrows their query down to “coffee table books,” however, the bookstore that is optimized for those specific keywords will rank higher on the SERP than other bookstores. You should not attempt to rank highly for all keywords as they are not all necessary to your audience’s needs, but you should aim to rank highly for keywords that are specific and relevant to your site. Keywords can be optimized for each page of your site by being placed in the title tag, near the top of the page, and in the body copy, among other places on the page.
Inbound links are valuable because they indicate a site’s popularity. Having one website link to yours is essentially an endorsement of your site, so you want to amass as many reliable links as possible by engaging in link-building campaigns. A common mistake beginner SEOs fall victim to is buying links as part of their campaigns. While search engines value links with merit, they penalize spammy links. There are plenty of methods to get worthwhile links, however. The most important method is to create high-quality work that people will talk about and link to on their own without any prompting. Additionally, contacting your business partners and exchanging links with them is a great way to collect links.
On your journey to whatever your SEO goals may be, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to know everything about SEO to benefit from it. There are multiple levels of SEO literacy, from the absolute basics to the self-proclaimed “gurus.” Knowing how to optimize your site in any capacity is useful and will provide you with important skills.
If you’re looking for an in-depth guide to SEO, check out the Moz SEO guide as well as their SEO tools.
Exciting news: Boxcar is producing a commercial! Our team is feeling very enthusiastic about this project and I was lucky enough to be included in the writing process. I’ve been learning a lot this past week and a half regarding writing in advertising and I came away with three key aspects to consider when writing a commercial: visuals, time, and story.
Unless you’ve been trained to write for video, accompanying visuals with the written word is difficult. In other forms of creative writing, the visual component is an imaginary one that exists in the mind of the reader and has the capacity to change. A good writer will include imagery that guides the reader in their own construction of a visual, but this imagery does not need to be highly specific. This is not the case when writing for video, where visuals are an integral piece of what you’re attempting to communicate. If the visual component of a video script is not clear and specific, the client will likely not understand your message and have different expectations about how their spot will look. This can cause problems during production and filming, so it’s important to have a static and specific visual that accompanies the written portion of the script.
Commercials have stringent timeframes. A 30-second spot absolutely must be 30 seconds – no more and not much less. For seasoned vets, like Mollie, Jim, and Brian, this is no problem. For beginners like me, figuring out exactly what will fit into a specific timeframe is challenging. Luckily, we had a ton of old scripts on hand that I could reference and learn from. I began to get a feel for how much would fit into 30 seconds by reading these old scripts and pulling inspiration from other team members.
Storytelling is vital to persuasion, so it needs to be the driving force in a commercial. The most recent video I wrote at Boxcar was an instructional one. Its purpose was to inform rather than sell, so it did not have a central storyline. Additionally, storytelling in advertising is different from storytelling in other forms of creative writing. Because of my lack of familiarity with video and advertising’s style of storytelling, my early drafts lacked direction. After writing a few of these drafts, Mollie gave me this great advice:
Imagine you’re telling a basic boy-meets-girl story with the focus on the girl. What can you tell me about her? What’s her occupation? Is she a penguin? If she’s a penguin, does she have a broken fin? Once you figure out who she is, what her motivations are, and why she matters, you can develop her character and tell her story.
I went back to my scripts and found the motives of the characters within them as well as the motives of the spot’s potential viewers. Doing this gave my drafts some purpose and direction and provided me with the necessary inspiration to brainstorm more ideas.
This was an incredibly collaborative writing project. The entire team would write a few scripts, regroup and share ideas, then go back to writing with the input and inspiration that we got from each other. There was such a free exchange of ideas, and I definitely learned a lot about video, writing, and storytelling in the process.
Social media is vital to the success of any business. It’s an effective form of communication that allows businesses to gain recognition and influence, share aspects of its personality, and build relationships. These are all things that businesses need to thrive, and social media creates an accessible avenue to accomplish them. For any social media efforts to be successful, however, you need to create a strategy.
When I first began making social posts for Boxcar, I didn’t know the importance of strategy. I had tried writing plans, but I couldn’t fill them out with content and stick to it. As a result, we weren’t reaching new users or engaging with our followers, and our pages were not cohesive. I quickly sought the help of creative super-genius Jim, and he gave me three key tips for building a social media strategy.
The first tip is to make sure Boxcar’s personality is being communicated in every single post. When we think of the Boxcar personality, three elements stand out: we are knowledgeable, we are approachable, and we are fun to work with. Our team and clients know these elements of our culture, but the rest of the world does not (yet). To communicate our personality, I began to think more in-depth about each social post I made to ensure Boxcar’s character was being accurately represented. This involves making sure social media content reflects the work we do, being mindful of the tone we write in, and striking a balance between being professional and not taking ourselves too seriously.
Jim’s next tip is to be mindful of followers and page likes. While followers aren’t the only mark of success, they do matter. Social media influence is vital to gaining new business and establishing yourself as a reputable participant in your field, so it’s important to make sure that you’re reaching and engaging with your followers in meaningful ways. There are a ton of resources for social media analytics. Facebook pages have the insight tab, Moz subscribers have access to tools such as Followerwonk, and sites such as Simply Measured have both paid subscriptions and plenty of free reports. Knowing who your followers are, when they’re online, and what sort of content they like is incredibly helpful for increasing the success of your social media pages.
The final tip is to post the correct type of content. On any social media platform, you want your followers to be able to interact with the content you post. Social media content should always be relevant to your field and should inform, entertain, convert, and engage your followers. Engagement is such a buzzword in social media, because likes, shares, and comments increase the reach of your posts and get people thinking about your brand (in addition to all that, it makes the people managing your social media feel warm and fuzzy).
It’s common knowledge that social media is important for businesses, but you can’t play it by ear. Businesses with successful social media endeavors have comprehensive strategies and plans. It can be difficult to come up with a social media strategy, and you will likely need to take some time to experiment with what works for you. I’ve only just begun to completely implement the strategy Jim and I came up with, but our social media pages have already seen results. Thanks to an effective strategy, we can reap the full benefits of social media.
Recently, I was tasked with writing a script for a client’s video and case studies for the Boxcar website. Having always been a writer, I assumed that these would be simple tasks. It can’t be that difficult to write a two-minute-long video or a 100-word case study, right? Not quite. Luckily, I had tons of guidance from the Boxcar team.
The video script was a relatively simple and straightforward write. I was given access to past scripts the Boxcar team had written and used those as guidelines. Since we had previously produced a video for this client, all I needed to do was study the old script, plug in the new information, and make revisions when necessary. The real challenge of crafting this script was the fact that it needed to be written in the voice of the client rather than my own. It took a couple of tries for me to be able to pinpoint this and channel it into writing. Having access to the previous script was particularly helpful in identifying the brand’s voice, but looking through their website and social media accounts allowed me to refine it. Once the script was completed, the entire team worked together to revise it. Revision is where the magic of writing occurs, so it was especially fascinating to see my bare-bones, beginner script transformed into something stellar by being filtered through the Boxcar super-geniuses.
It was much more challenging to write the case studies than it was to write the script because high-quality case studies are masterpieces in the art of the “humble brag.” In addition to this, the case studies were for clients who were partnered with Boxcar long before I became part of the team. As a result, I didn’t have firsthand knowledge of Boxcar’s experience with them, and I needed to go back and forth with Mollie to make sure all the information was correct. The case studies were also subject to revision by other members of the Boxcar team to make sure they aligned with our own brand.
In the process of learning how to write video scripts and case studies, I’ve become a better, more versatile writer (and I think I may be getting the hang of this whole “humble brag” thing). The ability to step into the shoes of a brand and communicate in their voice is an important skill to have in any communication field but it makes up the core of digital advertising. Videos and case studies are everywhere; any given digital agency will have at least a few of them on their website. Because of their prevalence, the ability to craft high-quality videos and case studies will help you and your brand stand out.
If you’re interested in reading some of these case studies, head over to our work page.
Social media is an important aspect of business operations because of its prevalence and myriad benefits. Social media is massively trendy. Everyone – from clients to colleagues to friends and family – is using social media. When businesses use these platforms, they are given an opportunity to interact with these groups in frequent and informal, yet still meaningful ways. There are also major monetary benefits to using social media, as it can be one of the most affordable ways to reach clients and build up a brand.
There are two different routes for social media: campaigns and page management. The goal of social media campaigns is to establish or grow a community. Ads, promoted posts, and gated content are often components of social media campaigns. Page management is the upkeep of social media pages; it includes content creation and day-to-day posting and interaction on social media platforms. Boxcar has experience with both social media campaigns and management, but the focus of this blog post is the management aspect.
When Boxcar manages social media for a client, we create a spreadsheet that includes all content that we’ve created for the month as well as what days it should be posted. We can do all sorts of content here at Boxcar – written posts, images, polls – but our favorite by far is video. Currently, we create all social media video content for Cantina Laredo, and we’re having a blast with it. When creating content for a client, it’s important to operate within the voice of the brand and to make sure that the correct platforms are being used. For example, Cantina Laredo’s brand can best be described as “Modern Mexican.” When making videos, we keep this voice in mind and make sure it shines through.
One of my responsibilities as an intern is to run the social media pages for Boxcar. I create detailed monthly social media plans and post that content on our pages. Social media is surprisingly difficult. For the longest time, I found it strange that some companies would have entire departments devoted to social media. Now that I’ve dabbled a bit in doing social media for a business, I know why social media teams are frequently necessary. No one person can truly encapsulate the voice of their brand. In order to develop and execute a successful social media strategy, one needs to think complexly and collaborate with their team. There’s a great deal of work that goes into creating a vibrant social media footprint, but the payoff is worth it all in the end.
My next intern-adventure followed in the footsteps of the first in that every moment was devoted to learning something new. I spent most of the day on Lynda.com, a database of instructional videos, where I learned what WordPress is and how it works. Boxcar’s website, as well as many of the websites we create for clients, is built on WordPress because it’s a cost-effective and efficient platform with a ton of room for creative freedom.
WordPress is a content management system, or “CMS.” A CMS is capable of changing large amounts of content quickly across multiple pages, posts, or sites. A few years ago, Boxcar created their own website template on WordPress with a plugin called Bootstrap. They were able to have complete creative freedom while still working within WordPress’ super rad content management system.
When I was given my tasks for the day, Mollie told me there would be a conference call that afternoon with a potential client. She explained that Boxcar had already sent a request for proposal, also referred to as an RFP. An RFP is a document, usually about 30 pages long, in which the agency explains how it would conduct business if the client chose to work with them. Mollie humorously compared it to one of my “boring English papers,” and told me that at big agencies there are departments devoted entirely to cranking out RFPs.
The call began at 3 o’clock, and I sat down with an excited Boxcar team to tune-in. This was cool to sit in on because I had no idea things like this went on behind the scenes. In my mind, a client comes into an agency with a pretty clear idea of what they want and the agency executes it. What I witnessed was an entirely different ballgame. The Boxcar team asked a lot of targeted questions.
Who’s your target audience? How are you reaching them? What is your product currently branded as? What do you want it to be branded as?
An RFP had already been written and fledgling plans had already been constructed, but there was still so much work left to do. The team still needed to decide what the product would be branded as, what type of ads they would utilize as well as the copy and artwork for them, and how they would get their message to the right audience. Advertising and marketing take some serious dedication.
All in all, my first few experiences at Boxcar were pretty amazing. It was a bit like being thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool when you’re first learning to swim: equal parts scary and exciting. Even though I’ve just barely scratched the surface, I’m eager to delve deep into the world of advertising and digital marketing.
Based on my experience in interviews and with media images, I expected an internship to be one of two things: a) lots of watching and observing other people do their job or b) lots of menial tasks, like filing paperwork or making copies. I didn’t expect to jump right in and experience what it’s like to work in the field of digital marketing and advertising.
I’m brand new to the world of digital marketing and advertising. I’m an English major with minors in communication studies and history, and as such was not familiar with what work in this field entails. For years, my knowledge of marketing and advertising was limited to what I saw Don Draper and Peggy Olson do on Mad Men. This dramatic and glamorized depiction was always intriguing, especially to someone like me who is already a writer and fascinated by persuasion. My infatuation with advertising led to many conversations with people who are advertising or marketing majors and people who have already done work in the field.
With the end of my college career quickly approaching, I needed to find a field to work in. With intrigue about digital marketing and advertising at the back of my mind, I took to search engines with key words like “copywriting,” “advertising,” and “marketing.” Enter Boxcar Creative, a small-scale creative firm in Dallas, Texas. I apply as an intern and go to an interview where I’m shown the vast scale of marketing and advertising and what opportunities exist in the field. My intrigue only grows stronger, and we set the date to start my internship: September 7.
On my first day, I was given a few tasks. Oddly enough, none of these involved any shadowing or filing paperwork. From the moment I walked in the door, I was given the opportunity to do actual work that would give me an opportunity to learn and grow. The most important of these tasks was taking over the blog. Over the course of my internship, I’ll be communicating all the cool stuff about digital marketing and advertising that I’m learning here at Boxcar to you.
For my first job of the day, I was shown a scope, a detailed run down of a campaign and asked to condense it down into a message that would convey the necessary information to a client without having to muddle through a 6-page-long document. This is also called an “elevator pitch,” because it shouldn’t take longer to read than the amount of time you would ride in an elevator. I uploaded this into basecamp, a project management software that many businesses in this industry use to communicate with their clients.
The next thing to check off my to-do list was proofreading the Boxcar website. In doing this, I was able to chat with Jim, the head of creative, and learn a lot about what advertising copy should look and sound like. Coming from the perspective of an English major, this kind of language was new and exciting for me. My first instinct was to look for anything that one of my professors would circle in red ink and deduct a couple of points for. The feedback I got from Jim, however, indicated that grammatical conventions aren’t that important in “ad speak.” When someone reads copy, you want them to hear it as a “dramatic voiceover” in their head instead of in the same voice one would read a boring English essay in. I guess semicolon rules aren’t that important after all.
All in all, it’s looking like my time at Boxcar will be full of hands-on learning and opportunities to grow. In a conversation with Jim, I expressed how exciting it was to be gaining all of this knowledge so quickly. His response was equal parts hilarious and motivating: “and someday, you may even gain wisdom.”