Rob Frappier: Marketing Writer, Blogger, All-Around Nice Guy

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Blues music may have gotten its start in the muddy delta of the Mississippi, but few places in the United States have done more to advance this quintessentially American art form than Chicago. For proof of the Windy City’s proud blues tradition, look no further than the annual Chicago Blues Festival.

Since its inception in 1984, the Chicago Blues Festival has become one of Chicago’s flagship festivals and the largest free blues festival in the world, providing hours of entertainment to hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Just a few of the famous names that have appeared at the Chicago Blues Festival in past years include B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and Bo Diddley, among other musical legends.

In preparation for this year’s 26th annual Chicago Blues Festival (June 11th-13th), I’ve put together five fun facts about the festival that will help turn even the greenest blues fan into a true blues hound.

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1) You never know who will be there!

The Chicago Blues Festival is definitely the best place to see the world’s greatest blues musicians, but over the years it has also become a place for other famous performers to strut their stuff. One of the most notable Blues Festival collaborations came in 1986 when rock and roll icon Chuck Berry joined forces with the Rolling Stones’ legendary guitarist Keith Richards for a special headlining performance.

2) You can make a few hundred thousand new friends.

Since its first year, when 165,000 people showed up to pay tribute to the late Muddy Waters, the Chicago Blues Festival has ballooned in attendance, eventually amassing an unprecedented 800,000 visitors in 2007. Is there really anything better than singing and swaying with nearly a million blues fans on a beautiful summer day?

3) The Chicago Blues Festival has gone high tech.

When it comes to festivals, I never like to be too organized. Sure, I might take a look at the schedule to make sure I don’t miss anything important, but for the most part I enjoy just walking around and taking in the scene. Of course, I’m probably in the minority, which is why the Chicago Blues Festival has released its very own iPhone application.

The Blues Festival iPhone app features an array of tools to help visitors get the most blues action possible, including live schedule updates, artist descriptions, a color coded map of the festival, and a direct link to the Blues Festival Twitter feed. Plus, since we don’t want to go through another Great Chicago Fire, the app has a cool “Encore Flame” that the audience can use instead of a cigarette lighter.

4) The Chicago Blues Festival is also about education.

The “Blues in the Schools” program, originally developed by Chicago musician Billy Branch in 1978, is a unique opportunity for Chicago-area students to learn about the culture and history of blues music, as well as how to write and perform their own blues songs, under the direction of professional blues musicians.

Thanks to retired Chicago school teacher Kay Jones, Blues in the Schools has operated as an extension of the Chicago Blues Festival since 1988. In the 21 years since, a performance by students in the Blues in the Schools program has been the traditional opening act for the festival.

5) Did I mention it’s free?

There are a ton of great concerts in Grant Park during the summer, most notably the mega-sized music festival Lollapalooza, but few of them offer hours upon hours of entertainment for absolutely free. Granted, you will still have to pay 8 dollars for a strip of 12 “food and beverage” tickets (one of Chicago’s patented summer festival rip-offs), but I really don’t mind spending $20 on a few drinks if it means I get to sit in the sun all day and listen to music.

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Bottom line,  if you’re in Chicago from June 11th – 13th, there’s no excuse to miss out on the Chicago Blues Festival. So download your iPhone app and start strumming your electric guitar now, because I’m planning on seeing you there!

Back in December, I fulfilled a lifelong goal. After years of laboring day and night over my keyboard, blogging and tweeting until my fingers cramped up into strange claw-like shapes, I finally reached the point where Google auto-filled my name. It was a triumphant day for me, filled with tears of joy and celebratory showers of champagne, but in my heart I knew it was only the beginning.

Yes, Google did auto-fill my name, but only when I typed in “Rob Frap.” A win, certainly, but a small one. Never content to rest on my laurels, I vowed to keep working on my Google presence until I was able to appear in Google’s auto-complete for “Rob Fra” as well. And from there, of course, I would work for “Rob Fr” and, finally, “Rob F.” About a week ago, my hard work paid off and I achieved this last goal, joining the ranks of the many fine Rob F’s on Google.

As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, I’m just below “Rob Fantasy Factory” and just above “Rob Figliulo” — some rather esteemed company, if I do say so myself! Obviously, my next goal is to have my name suggested after typing in “Rob,” but that’s another level of Internet fame entirely.

Do I have what it takes? Will I someday be able to join the ranks of Rob Zombie, Rob Lowe, Rob Thomas, and Rob Pattinson? Only time will tell. In the meanwhile, I will bask in Google’s glow and the two or three extra visitors that will make it to this blog thanks to auto-complete.

(In case you couldn’t sense it, this post was written with tongue firmly in cheek. While I am happy that I’m gaining some gravitas on Google, and I definitely think you should spend time working to build a strong personal brand online, I’m really not this self-absorbed.)

[comic via Toothpaste for Dinner]

“Personal branding” is one of those phrases that gets thrown around a lot in conversations these days. Not that I’m complaining of course. I use the phrase a lot, and why shouldn’t I? It’s a pretty succinct expression. Whether it’s your blog, your Twitter feed, or your Facebook profile, the way you choose to identify yourself online is, in essence, your personal brand. Considering that I work in the world of social media, it makes sense that it would come up.

The problem is, I’m not entirely sure what my personal brand is, especially when I compare myself to of some of my peers. Take Tim Jahn for example. Through his work with Beyond the Pedway, Tim has made connections at every creative company in a 50-mile radius and has carved out a nice niche as Chicago’s go-to digital video guy. Likewise, Rebecca Denison has turned an aptitude for social media measurement (as channeled through the eyes of a young Gen-Y professional) into a very entertaining and frequently enlightening blog. It’s no wonder she’s a member of the excellent team at Edelman Digital.

Looking at those two and how they have spent time crafting their identities online, I am somewhat envious. Where they have a clear focus, I feel like my web presence is fractured. At first glance, you might say I’m a blogger focused on copywriting and social media. Under closer examination, however, that identity doesn’t hold up. For one thing, I don’t update this blog nearly as often as I should, and, obviously, you can’t be known for something if there’s no content to validate your expertise.

That’s not to say I’m not writing online of course. To the contrary, I’m active everyday creating high quality content for my company, ReputationDefender. Unfortunately, while much of my writing there focuses on social media, it is social media as defined within the scope of the ReputationDefender brand (reputation management issues, personal privacy, etc). For the company, that is good, and it is exactly why I was hired. However, for me personally, it doesn’t help to define my brand as a marketer since it doesn’t appear on my personal blog.

Apart from ReputationDefender blogging, I also spend a lot of time writing for the entertainment news website Screen Rant. In this role, however, I don’t even consider what I do to be blogging, but rather online journalism. While I inject opinion into the articles I write, and occasionally pen longer editorial pieces such as this recent piece about Captain America (NERD ALERT), the focus is on getting the facts right and crafting a clean narrative. In other words, I treat writing for Screen Rant as if I were writing for a magazine or newspaper. It’s a different medium and it deserves a different approach.

Given my competing priorities online, I sometimes find myself wondering whether I should even call myself a blogger or if I should just go with the more general term of “writer.” Perhaps six or seven years ago what I am doing with this website could have been called blogging, but, considering how far the medium has come, I’m not so sure anymore. If you don’t have a clearly defined niche or a regular audience for your primary website, are you still blogging or is it just an exercise in vanity?

What do you think? Am I imbuing the word blog with too much importance? If you spend most of your time writing for some other publication online, does that define your personal brand, or is only what you post under your own name? Let me know what you think in the comments.