Last year we completely overhauled our Spectrum blog so that we could give you, our beloved reader MORE! Since then, we’ve given you more content, more authors and more ways to be inspired by our stories. As we take a look back at what we've accomplished in the past year, we thought we'd create a "Senior Superlative-Style Yearbook Page" that focused on the new features of the blog that resonated with you the most.
The #1 Feature we listed in last year’s blog that explained our new approach was MORE CONTENT! Since then, we have published over 100 blogs to pique your interest; and out of all those new posts, the blog that was read the most was Rosco SoftDrop: The Easiest Backdrop Ever, which introduced our innovative, “game-changing” backdrop solution for feature films, television shows and broadcast studios.
Almost all of our stories are designed to showcase how other customers – your peers and colleagues – are using Rosco products in their work. The hope is that one person’s story about using Rosco products will inspire you on your upcoming project. This post is a perfect example of that! Cinematographer Mike McMurray explained the features of the SoftDrop that mattered most to him, and thousands read the Spectrum blog to find out what they were.
Before the overhaul, we only had two or three authors writing stories to share with you. Now, we have over ten authors, as well as a healthy number of guest authors – all of which are professionals in their fields – and they love gathering stories for you.
Our most popular new author is Tom Swartz. Tom’s unique experience and knowledge of the Film & Television industry led to excellent blogs including: the Softdrop post mentioned above, as well as Introducing the New Silk 210: Lighting So Attractive It Even Makes Radio Look Good and Enhancing ITV’s Morning VIEW. Tom has recently become the Director of Business Development for our Australian office, so we’re excited to see new stories from him that showcase how our products are getting used down under.
Our runner up for top new author is Steve Ramos, whose posts include global stories about Rosco architectural installations, such as Bright Red Heart of Almere’s City Mall in the Netherlands, An Entrance with a Sense of Presence Thanks to Custom LitePad in Dublin and Day.One – The Colorful Art of Daylight from Mexico City. It was Steve’s popular Miro Cubes Light The Rare And Luxurious On The Miracle Mile post, however, that launched him into the #2 slot. That post described our impressive Miro Cube installation in the world-famous Petersen Automotive Museum, which appealed to illumination professionals in all areas of the lighting industry.
We know that our products and our stories cover a broad spectrum (pun intended) of markets and industries. To make it easier for you to find the stories that are relevant to your work, as a part of the overhaul, we sorted the blog into categories. You might have guessed it – the most popular new Spectrum category was Film/TV Broadcast. Obviously, the SoftDrop post helped here too – but other popular blogs like How to Paint a Green Screen Treadmill in 3 Steps and LitePad Vector – The Swiss Army Knife of Lighting also gave this category a boost.
It’s worth noting that the Entertainment Lighting category was a very close second. Thanks to popular posts like How Subtractive Color Mixing Works and The Magic’s in the Glass, lighting designers learned about the history, background-physics and real-world implementation of our popular lighting products like gels and gobos.
If you find one of our Spectrum posts interesting… chances are that your friends and followers on social media will too! That’s why we introduced the fantastic social-sharing feature that allows you to easily share your favorite blog posts easily to social media. Since implementing this feature, The Birth Of A Gobo: How One Of Our Most Popular Patterns Was Designed has been our most shared blog with thousands of posts & shares to Facebook!
It’s interesting to contrast that blog – about the history of a popular gobo design drawn on vellum – with our second most popular post How To Create Backlit Effects with RoscoLED Tape, which is about using our new LED tape product. The RoscoLED Tape post has seen a lot of activity across all of our social media accounts – but this blog has been especially popular on Pinterest.
As a part of last year’s update, readers were enabled to subscribe to Rosco Spectrum via RSS using a reader like Feedly.com. Simply click the RSS symbol, and you’ll get updates in your reader every time there’s a new blog. Remember, if there’s an author you enjoy or a category you specifically want to follow, you can subscribe to those by clicking the RSS symbol found next to the author and/or category in the side-navigation.
We received many requests, however, for a non-RSS method of subscribing to the blog. We now offer an email signup feature in the side navigation as well. Simply enter your email address and you’ll get a message in your inbox every time a new blog is published.
As always, thank you for continuing to read and follow Rosco Spectrum. Did you have a favorite post from the past year? Email us and tell us which one it was? And don’t forget that Rosco Spectrum is only as good as the stories we’re able to share. Be sure to send us the interesting projects that you’ve worked on using Rosco products so that we can share your story on the Rosco Spectrum blog!
Chanda Goldsworthy June 08, 2016 Questions?