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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.

The very first concert I ever went to was Weird Al when I was around nine. Needless to say, he holds a special place in my heart. Enjoy.

According to a 2007 article in the New York Times, the average cost of a one-hour scripted network drama is approximately $3 million. If you have a flip cam, basic editing software, and a computer with Internet access, you can produce your own web series for less than $5.

Between YouTube and the ever-decreasing cost of digital video technology, it is possible for anyone with a creative vision and a bit of entrepreneurial pluck to share their very own movie or television show with the world. Over the last couple of years, a few of my friends have been working on their own web series, and I thought it might be interesting to take some time today, in anticipation of their pending second season premiere, to talk about the show.

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Moxie Spendlove was conceived in 2007 by Jason Biggers, Jeremy Scheffee, and my sister Shelly Frappier, who also plays the title role in the show. The series revolves around the character of Moxie Spendlove, a “wide-eyed socialite who inherited the family fortune, became president of her grandfather’s gag gift franchise, and set out on a mission to find something that would make her truly happy.”

Season One of Moxie Spendlove introduced a diverse cast of characters to help (and hinder) Moxie in her efforts to find her purpose in life, including Moxie’s chief confidante (who spends most of Season One deep in the closet); her buck-toothed assistant (with a secret identity); and her two sweet but scatter-brained socialite friends (whose leaching habits would lead to their assassination). Actually, I was the person recruited for a two-scene role as the British assassin hired to kill them.

Now, I should note that I am not an actor, or at least I’m not anymore. In high school, you might have said I was, but even that would probably be a stretch. Nevertheless, I had a great time filming my scenes and I was happy to be involved in the production. Interestingly, the very fact that they asked me to lend my talents is what I think makes Moxie Spendlove successful.

Nobody involved in Moxie Spendlove is a professional actor or director, they are just regular people like you or me who had a fun idea for a story and the passion to bring it to life. They rely on friends to fill roles, they use apartments and local store fronts as sets, they design their own costumes, and they shoot and edit the show by themselves. Is it perfect? No, not exactly, but that’s not the point. Is it fun? Is it funny? Is it a great example of the kind of show you could put together if you were dedicated? Yes, yes, and yes.

I love when people pursue their creative passions, and I know from personal experience that that’s what happened on the set of Moxie Spendlove. With that in mind, I encourage you to watch this trailer for Season Two and check out the show when it premieres on May 31st.

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For the last five months or so, I’ve been working on a contract basis as the Community Manager of an Internet start-up company called ReputationDefender. In my work, I’m primarily responsible for writing customer-facing communications, including newsletters and daily blog posts about online reputation management, Internet privacy, and personal branding issues. In addition to my writing, I am also responsible for monitoring and managing the company’s presence on social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. It is in this part of my job where I get to have some of the most fun.

For instance, take a look at this exchange I had with a guy named Jay Braymer on Twitter.

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Although Jay didn’t mention ReputationDefender by name, nor did he use an @ reply to tag us, I was still able to see his message and respond to it because I was monitoring the appropriate search terms on TweetDeck. The resulting conversation was not only comical, but it helped demonstrate a value that my company offers, namely that we can help you effectively monitor and manage your online reputation.

Now, I know it probably seems like I’m patting myself on the back too much for something that seems pretty obvious, but the truth is that some companies will only engage their customers at the mention of their brand name. If I had only been looking out for mentions of @RepDef, I would have missed Jay’s message and thus missed the opportunity to have a unique and memorable exchange. Monitoring a diverse set of keywords relative to your core competencies is a great way to start interesting conversations and move beyond the realm of mere self-promotion.

Will Jay become a customer of ReputationDefender? Maybe yes, maybe no. To me, though, that’s not really the point. At the end of the day, when I look at how I used Twitter, or other social media tools, I ask myself, “Did I have any fun or interesting conversations today and did I represent my company’s brand well?” In this case, I’m happy to say yes on both counts.

Chris Brogan, famed communications consultant, author, and President of New Marketing Labs, set the social media world a-twitter (if you’ll pardon the pun) when he non-chalantly shared his consulting day rate in a recent blog post. The number, an impressive $22,000 a day, struck many readers as extremely high, particularly when juxtaposed against another blog post in which Chris solicited an unpaid intern to be a part of a new project he has in the works.

Now, in my opinion, if someone is willing to pay him $22,000 to do what he does, then Chris deserves to earn that kind of money. This is the United States of America baby. If you’re a consultant and you want to get paid big bucks, set high rates and do awesome work. We are all the keepers of our own souls. Do what works for you and don’t sweat it if you’re not at Chris’ level of success.

Of course, I’m not here to ramble on about my thoughts on the issue (I already did that in a comment here), what I’m interested in is bringing together some of the interesting and insightful analysis that sprung up AFTER Chris dropped the bomb. So, without further ado, here are my three favorite blog posts on Brogan-gate! (Is it okay to attach “gate” to this, or am I overreaching?)

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• Does Chris Brogan’s Day Rate “Anchor” the Cost of Social Media Consulting?

In an extremely insightful post over at Incentive Intelligence, Paul Hebert explains how, due to his level of celebrity in the social media sphere, Brogan’s revelation has set an anchor for the high end costs of social media consulting. In other words, though there are those who may charge more, Brogan’s fees are a good benchmark for what the highest earners could be making. Obviously, the majority of consultants don’t make that kind of scratch, but Hebert explains that Brogan’s anchor may still help lower or mid-level consultants earn more money.

Quoting from the post:

“Assume you are a very, very good social media consultant with great references (maybe even Chris himself) but you only charge $1,000 per day.  Congrats – you can probably give yourself a big raise.  Not that you’re doing anything better – just that the anchor for the work you do is now known and you can point to it and say – “hey, I do similar work as Chris and I’m only $10K per day.”  Your clients may now think your $10K rate looks like a bargain. That’s what anchors do.  They provide context for discussion and allow for comparisons.”

• So How Do You Figure Out Your Self-Worth?

In an interesting post at Justin Kownacki’s blog, Justin expounds upon some of the same themes brought up in the Incentive Intelligence post. In essence, Justin says that the reason people were upset over Brogan’s day rate is because they never knew that money like that was a realistic goal. Rather than sulking about how much money you’re not making, however, Justin suggests that you should reconsider how valuable your own services are.

In an excellent six-step strategy, which I won’t repeat here because you really should just read it at his blog, Justin outlines some of the ways that you can accurately determine your own consulting rates.

Quoting from the post:

“Valuing yourself according to other people’s self-estimations is the easiest way to drive yourself crazy.  But valuing yourself according to your own self-estimation is the easiest way to go hungry, because you never truly understand what your assets are actually worth to the people who don’t know what you know.”

• Why Do Price Discrepancies Exist and What Do They Mean For You?

In a wonderfully lengthy and deeply analytical blog post, Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer for N2Growth, explains the important role that pricing plays in all aspects of business, and why some people will pay $30,000 for a Rolex but “feel a Timex isn’t worth more than $50 dollars.”

What I like the most about Myatt’s post is that he carefully explains some of the complex issues that can impact pricing – the strength of your brand, your competition, whether there is a demand for your services –  and how this complexity must be acknowledged in order to fairly assess your own value.

Quoting from the post:

“Bottom line…pricing is not a taboo subject to be avoided, but rather a key metric that needs to be well understood as well as proactively measured and managed. Pricing needs to be dealt with in the most embryonic stages of strategic planning and needs to constantly be evaluated based upon changes in market dynamics”

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Do you have any insights into Brogan-gate that you’d like to offer? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Almost one full year ago, I started a blog called They Are Coming For Us!, a humorous website dedicated to exploring the inevitable robot uprising. The purpose of the blog was two-fold: I wanted to use it as a testing ground for SEO experiments, and I wanted to have an outlet beyond my professional writing obligations to talk about some things that I really enjoyed, namely robots, science-fiction, and other nerdy delights. I even started a Twitter account for the blog, which, for a time, was even more popular than my actual Twitter account.

After a few months of steady updating, however, I found myself visiting the site less and less frequently. There were viable excuses to stop writing on the site, including some work changes and a couple of new marketing-related blogging opportunities that I didn’t want to pass up, but, honestly, it came down to the fact that I just didn’t know what to with it anymore. The project had become a burden to update, rather than something that I actually enjoyed doing, so I let it fall to the wayside.

For months, the disappointment of walking away from something in which I had invested so much mental effort weighed heavily on my mind. Eventually, I realized that I had made a mistake. What use was there in blaming the site for my lack of inspiration? After all, the reason I was uninspired is because I was creating uninspiring content, and there’s nothing worse in the world of blogging than that.

So, taking inspiration from a couple of other go-getters whom I follow on Twitter (including Matt Cheuvront, Tim Jahn, and Brandon Zeman), I decided to redesign They Are Coming For Us! from the ground-up by changing the site from a general blog to a robot-themed web comic with a blog on the side.

Over the weekend, I put in a few hours here and there tinkering with different layouts until I hit on a brilliant Wordpress theme called ComicPress. After installing ComicPress, everything else started falling into place, and I began publishing comics at the end of last week.

Is the website perfect? Far from it. I still have a lot of work to do in fully connecting the site to the vast world of social media.

Is it a good start? I think so.

The truth is, even if what I’m writing isn’t funny, at least I’m enjoying what I’m doing with the site, which is something that hasn’t been the case for a long time. Besides, like everything else, it’s going to take some time for me to figure out what does and doesn’t work. To this point, if you have any feedback on the redesigned site, feel free to leave a comment here or there (or in a message to either Twitter account).

I look forward to hearing your comments, and I hope that They Are Coming For Us! will soon become a must-visit destination during your day.

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By now, the odds are good that you’ve heard about film director Kevin Smith’s recent clash with Southwest Airlines. If you haven’t yet heard the story, or you’re a bit fuzzy on the details, here are the essential details.

Kevin Smith, who is famous for directing Clerks, among numerous other popular comedy films, purchased two tickets for a short Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Burbank. When offered the opportunity to board an earlier stand-by flight, Smith took the option. Once on board, Smith seated himself and waited for the flight. At this point, according to Smith, it was determined by a Southwest employee that he required two seats to sit comfortably under Southwest’s “Customer of Size” policy and that he would have to be removed from the plane.

Being understandably embarrassed about the situation, Smith demonstrated that he could buckle the seat belt and put down the arm rests (two key requirements of the policy), but he was told to exit the plane anyway. At this point, Smith turned to his more than 1.6 million Twitter followers. In response to his status updates, many of his followers began lashing out against Southwest, prompting a Southwest employee to tweet an apology from the official Southwest Twitter account, along with an official apology at the Southwest Airlines corporate blog.

While you would think that might be the end of it, Smith still has a bone to pick with Southwest. The reason? As he clearly indicated by passing their test, he isn’t in fact “too fat to fly.” Despite this fact, however, while Southwest has agreed to review their “Customer of Size” policy to make sure that it’s appropriate, nobody has gone on record as saying that Smith was not in violation of the policy, which is all that he wants. Unfortunately, because of all the drama that this incident raised, the moniker of “too fat to fly” will now be a stain on his reputation for the rest of his life.

Kevin Smith on Southwest Airlines

As much as I like Kevin Smith as a director, and as a person in general, I can’t help but wonder if he isn’t responsible for all of this media attention. Now before you get mad at me, I want you to know I’m not blaming the victim. From my understanding of the incident, Smith was not necessarily treated fairly and I’m glad that Southwest is reviewing their policies to make sure nobody else must be embarrassed unnecessarily. However, if Kevin Smith hadn’t taken to Twitter with his complaint, it’s likely that the story wouldn’t have made national news (even the New York Times got involved) and he would still be known as one of the world’s most beloved indie-film directors and not the “too fat to fly” guy.

While social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Yelp have made it easier than ever to voice your displeasure over bad service, that doesn’t mean that you should automatically jump onto the web to plead your case. As Kevin Smith found out, when you complain about something, not everyone will be on your side. In this case, the sheer volume of angry, obscenity-laced comments against overweight people that the Smith/Southwest story has brought up is enough to show that perhaps it would have been better for him to suffer in silence, and then work with Southwest behind closed doors on resolving the issue.

If Smith had waited to try and sort out the issue privately, he may have been able to reach a more satisfying conclusion that wouldn’t have led to major media exposure. If Southwest wanted to play hardball, he still would have had the option of sharing his negative experience with the world, but he could have done it in a full-length blog post (like he eventually did here and here) where he might have been able to control the story better. Consider how much more impact Smith’s complaint would have had if he weren’t forced to try and explain the story in 140 character outbursts.

Social media has made it easy to give in to our impulses, particularly when it comes to complaining about something. As such, it is very important for companies to engage in proactive social media monitoring and maintain a full support staff for responding to customer concerns online. However, as consumers, we must also understand that Twitter and other social media sites are not always the proper forum to bring up a customer service issue.

Give the company a chance to respond to your concerns through traditional means of communication before pulling out the big guns. If you play your cards right, the company may offer a more satisfactory resolution to your concern than they would if they were forced to play defense online. Besides, even if a web rant does bring you swifter justice, consider the long-term effects in could have on your reputation. Do you really want the first results about you on Google to be a Twitter tirade?

What do you think? Is social media the first place you turn when you have a customer service problem, or do you use the good old-fashioned 800 number?

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Like most of the marketing community, I was generally disappointed with this year’s Super Bowl advertising (see my post at Beyond Madison Avenue). Generally, I felt they were uninspired, they failed to make a strong connection with their intended audience, and with the exception of the user-created Doritos ads, they lacked originality.

With that being said, one redeeming moment came. Thanks to the good people at Vizio, we now have proof that Gary Brolsma, aka the Numa Numa Kid is alive and well.

If, for some weird reason, you’re unfamiliar with the Numa Numa Kid, check out this Wikipedia article and the corresponding video below. Essentially, the Numa Numa saga is the story of how a Web cam, a super-catchy Romanian pop song, and the power of YouTube turned one nerdy kid into a worldwide sensation.

I remember laughing pretty hard the first time I saw this video over five years ago. It was as ridiculously goofy then as it is now. Of course, that didn’t stop it from racking up tens of millions of views and leading the way for countless imitations, interpretations, and parodies.

In fact, Mr. Brolsma has taken his unexpected Internet fame and turned it into an actual career. Long after I thought the video would have faded away, the dancing doofus (and I say that lovingly) has remained a vital part of our popular culture, and he’s not the only one.

In Vizio’s Super Bowl ad, which touted the Web functionality of the company’s new televisions, viewers were treated not only to Gary “Numa Numa” Brolsma but also the silky baritone voice of Tay “Chocolate Rain” Zonday and the world-famous Dramatic Chipmunk.

While I thought Vizio’s ad was only mildly effective (the peak of both Brolsma and Zonday’s popularity hit several years ago), it really made me think about the nature of celebrity in the Internet age. The things that we do online have never been more important to our real life successes and failures. Post a stupid picture of yourself on Facebook and you might lose your job. Post a crazy video of yourself on YouTube and you might turn it into multiple sponsorship opportunities, two music video appearances, and a spot in a $3 million Super Bowl ad.

What do you think makes an Internet meme go viral, and how long do you think these Web celebrities can keep milking the spotlight?