3 Social Media Rules to Break
Social media at times seems to have more rules than life in a free society will ever have. I say break the rules, and break them often. Stand up, stand out, and be heard. Otherwise, sit down, look down, follow the rules, and be part of the herd. Where is the fun in that? Where is the progress in that?
Social media is currently run like a massive, oppressive corporation, the very thing most people engaging in it want to get away from. It’s still young though, so there is hope that it can develop into a more open medium. Stay in line, and you will be treated well seems to be the rule. You wouldn’t hide your true self in “real” life, so be yourself in your social media interactions as well. Don’t be afraid to express your honest opinions, even if it means getting some flack. Individuality is what makes any communications medium great. Question social media, break some rules, leave the herd behind. Oh my. What ever could happen?? The reality is that people will appreciate your authenticity, and the places where you take part will be richer, better experiences for everyone.
Social media will be at its most valuable when the dialog is open and honest, when communication is sincere and challenging. Sure, tact has its place, but so does speaking up.
#1 social media rule to break: Always be positive on social media sites.
Why? Tearing things down is how we learn how to build them back up better than before. ‘Always be positive.’ It sounds like a mantra from ‘1984,’ destined to numb the unsuspecting minds of the masses. I’m not saying be an ornery curmudgeon, but boldly, tactfully stating your dissenting opinion is absolutely fine, and really, should be encouraged.
If the goal of a social media site was to build a community of me too’s and followers, then always staying positive would be a great way to go. Thing is, strong communities are not built by followers. They are built by leaders and passionate people. Leaders are not afraid to speak up, and you shouldn’t be afraid either.
When phrased right, non-attacking negativity can be incredibly productive for everyone. It’s a great way to keep the dialog honest and open. Great communication is one of the keys to success.
When you hear a false claim, or worse, an outright lie, do you let it go or challenge it? I bought a WordPress theme last year that was marketed with false advertising. When a well-known social media consultant tweeted about his blog post promoting that theme, I mentioned in reply that the theme’s developer was non-responsive to my requests to fix his theme to align with his advertising. The consultant did a gentle social media “time-out” by asking me to reply directly to his email instead of on Twitter. Another prominent social media guy had already tweeted an empathetic reply.
My tweet had apparently diminished the value of the consultant’s tweet by speaking negatively about the product. It’s fascinating that it was perfectly alright in the social media world to wax poetic about the greatness of this falsely-advertised theme, but it was not ok to point out it’s shortcomings. If social media rules continue in that vein, social media will quickly receive the same type of suspicion and contempt reached by traditional advertising mediums due to lack of honesty and authenticity.
It’s healthy to challenge the status quo. It’s how we learn and progress.
#2 social media rule to break: Get involved.
Again, why? Before you get involved in social media, always, always, always do two things. 1) Ask yourself why you are getting involved, and 2) Set up a strategic plan with time constraints which integrates with your business plan. If you discover that social media doesn’t fit comfortably and purposefully into your plan, leave it out, and spend your time doing the things that make an actual impact on your business.
Not too long ago, it was believed that every business needed to blog, but that has been well-proven to be erroneous thinking. Some people and businesses are simply not made for blogging, and that’s ok because there are plenty of other ways to make your voice heard.
#3 social media rule to break: Make social media a priority.
One more time, why? Make your significant other a priority. Make your kids a priority. Make your marketing, time-management or self-discipline a priority. Haven’t Twittered yet today? So what? When you have something important to say, Twitter away. The rest of the time, do the things that keep your business well-oiled, healthy, and moving forward.
Rules are made to be broken, especially when they promise to force a good communication medium to repeat the failures of its predecessors. Social media rocks, but some of it’s rules just plain suck. It’s high time to rise up and liberally break the rules that make no sense. Breaking rules is good for individuals, business, and community alike.
How to Start Up With a Professional Logo, On Budget and On Time
Should you start your business without a professionally designed logo? The answer is a resounding No! There is absolutely no valid reason or excuse to shortchange your goals and dreams by starting your business without a professional logo. Here’s why:
If you launch a business without a logo, you are endangering the success of your business and your brand right out of the starting blocks. A brand is not a thing created solely by the customer, and it’s not just for the customer. Your brand is a conglomeration of the following things, in this order: an entrepreneur’s or company’s core values, your visual and verbal identity (including your logo, the cornerstone of your identity), customer service, product or service quality, and finally the customer’s experience. All of these elements combine to create perception, experience, and loyalty. Your logo plays a vital role in this mix, as the single most communicative and memorable ingredient.
Your logo serves a much larger role than “just” the meaningful identifier for your customers though. It is a daily signal to inspiration and motivation for you and your employees. Your logo is also the single fastest way to communicate your worthiness to angels and bankers, as well as your professionalism to vendors. Your logo and corporate identity set the tone for nearly all of your branding and marketing communications, including your website. If you don’t start with a professional logo, it is highly likely that you will end up with a mish-mash of mismatched marketing communications.
If you skip the critical step of designing a logo, you leave the customer, and all of the people your business relies on, to define their own picture of you. Some people will do this with their own visual cues, and some will not do it at all.
If you design your own logo, it is highly likely that you will want to redesign within 2-3 years. The simple reason for this is that pro designers simply think differently. They solve creative problems in different ways than non-designers. They design logos that stand the test of time. A good logo should last 10-20 years. If you change your logo after just two or three years, you will have to re-educate your customers, yourself, and your employees, and that costs a lot of money.
The most common thing I hear from clients after we complete a logo and identity design is that they now feel real and legitimate. How powerful is that? Super powerful.
Human beings process 80% of all information visually, so if you skip giving them a meaningful logo to remember, guess what? Chances are pretty high that they won’t remember your company. Instead, when they need your product or service again, they will Google it or try to locate it at a store. They may find you, or they may find one of your competitor’s products.
If you later decide to design a logo after launching your business, you have just created a massive disconnect for the customers who have already created their own picture of who you are, and you must now retrain their minds to discover your company all over again. That costs a significant chunk of change. And people don’t like change when it comes to their brands.
How to Get a Professional Logo On Budget and On Time
Three primary misconceptions hold small businesses back from designing a logo prior to launching their business:
1. Lack of money
2. Lack of time
3. Lack of a good graphic designer, also called disillusionment.
Small business owners and DIYers have a strong tendency to think that logo and identity design will cost too much, and they think it will take too long. If they manage to get past those two excuses, they often hire an inexperienced graphic designer who scares them away with poor design, and they get disillusioned and lose perspective. These are the three most common excuses business owners use to talk themselves out of launching their company with the single most compelling tool available (the logo). There are easy ways to get past all three of these misconceptions. Here they are:
1. Lack of Money – The money factor is the easiest one to conquer. You don’t need a small fortune to hire a competent graphic designer. It’s simply a question of finding the right designer. Set a realistic budget, and be completely up front about it with the designers you call. Avoid trying to get a deal because you’re likely to instead end up with less of a design than you deserve. If the idea for your product or business is great, it deserves to be well-represented. If it isn’t professional looking, that sends a message that your company or product isn’t up to snuff.
Avoid the temptation of trying to get a logo on the cheap from a bulk logo house. These companies have no interest in creating a logo that will truly represent your core characteristics and last you 10 or 20 years, and they can’t possibly help to give you the deeper understanding of your business that a competent designer can.
Interview 3-5 graphic designers on the phone or in person, and chances are you will find one who can work with your budget. You have to know where to look, but it’s not hard. If you call a designer or firm, and they tell you your budget is too low, don’t be offended. It’s not personal. Ask them for the name of a designer they know who can work with your budget. The good designers will want to help you.
When I take calls from people looking to hire me, I am very up front about our rates. I’ve done an extensive amount of work to devise ways to make working with smaller budgets profitable. Not everyone knows how to do that, so it really is important to make several calls and ask good questions, all with an open mind to the possibilities.
2. Lack of Time – Begin with the end in mind. The first thing you should do when you decide to start a company is call a professional graphic designer. Why? Design runs the world. Look at what mother nature did with design if you need an example to validate that claim. (Unfortunately, she’s not available.) If you are having trouble naming your company, some designers also do brand naming, and they can help. If you already have a great name, you have a head start.
If you have the time, get started with your graphic designer about 3-4 months ahead of your business launch. If you are short on time, find a designer who works extremely well under deadline pressure. They’re out there (not to plug myself, but I’m one of them). I’ve designed logos that lasted 15 years or more in literally hours, not days or weeks. It’s best not to count on instant turnaround, especially if the designer will be working with a committee for approval. 3-6 weeks is considered normal, but faster is certainly possible. The search for a designer should take a maximum of three half days, or 12 hours total. 12 hours to find a designer who fits your business like a glove is a bargain of time.
3. Lack of a good designer, or Disillusionment – This is another easy one to conquer. The best way to avoid getting poor graphic design that undermines your confidence in the power of great design is to get #1 right. Set a realistic budget, be up front about it, and find a designer who you really connect with in conversation. Are they asking relevant questions? Are they making you think? Are they paying attention? Make sure you like their logo design work. If they use a lot of photos as logos, keep searching. (Photos are used only when a designer is totally stumped, and photos make horrible logos because they are way too detailed to remember in the blink of an eye.)
Ask a lot of questions. Don’t ask which software they use because software has nothing to do with design – it’s simply a tool, like a hammer to a carpenter. Instead, focus on their design process. How will they start? What will be the project stages? What does their estimate include? Does the estimate include revisions? If the estimate doesn’t include revisions, that can be a red flag. Experienced designers know to include this on their estimates. When can you expect to see rough concepts? When will the project be completed? Ask as many questions as you need to feel totally good about the designer, then hire one.
Great! You’ve Hired a Designer. Now What?
Once you hire a designer, think of them as a trusted partner who is going to understand you and help express your innermost visions. Your expressed confidence gives the designer the freedom to do great work for you.
If you follow these three simple tasks, you will get the logo your business needs to launch well at a price you can afford.
What Advertising Is Not, a List
Advertising is not push.
Advertising is not slow.
Advertising is not wasteful.
Advertising is not wow.
Advertising is not interruption.
Advertising is not necessarily big, nor is it necessarily expensive.
Advertising is not outside of most companies’ budgets.
Advertising is not a waste.
Advertising is not a bad investment.
Advertising is not one-way.
Advertising is not manipulative.
Advertising is not a place to tell lies or make empty promises.
Advertising is not optional in most effective marketing plans.
Advertising is not fully understood by most small businesses.
Advertising is not well-executed by many large companies.
Advertising is not remotely as slow as social media.
Advertising is not shunned.
5 Ways to Build A Quality Audience
In response to yesterday’s post, a few people asked me what are some better ways to find an audience? To answer that, I’d like you to look beyond simply adding people to your fan base. Quality is always better than quantity. Twitter followers are often unknown, not targeted, not local, and have unknown motives.
You can’t realistically think of your Twitter followers as a known entity. They’re more like magazine subscribers. You likely have little or no idea how many of them comprise those people who are likely to become clients, regular readers, or even legitimate “fans.” In all likelihood, some of your followers are simply collecting followers, with no real intent or purpose.
Lance Armstrong and 50 Cent each have more than 300,000 Twitter followers. In their cases, we can legitimately think of their followers as fans because we already know they have massive amounts of fans, but how many non-celebrity people have that? It’s a fair bet to say that the vast majority of Twitter users do not have a fan base in real life, at least not one that extends beyond their family and friends.
So, what’s the point? The point is that unless you already have celebrity status, a Twitter following is not going to help you build the strongest of quality audiences. Gaining followers on Twitter is popular simply because it requires little effort, but the vast majority of followers you will get are not terribly focused. Here are five better ways to build an audience.
5 Ways to Build A Quality Audience
1. Hands down, the best way to build an audience is with a good old fashioned marketing plan. Marketing is hard work, but it consistently yields positive results, particularly when you surround yourself with a solid plan devised by people who can objectively see what you may not. The first step here is to decide what kind of audience you truly want. Have you ever thought about that? It’s a simple rule: Begin with the end in mind.
2. Do something remarkable, and people will seek you out and follow you. Make your product or service outstanding. Become known for premiere customer service, a la Zappos, or make a name for yourself in any number of unique ways.
3. Look for a large targeted audience, such as you might find in an online or print magazine, then advertise in it. There are thousands from which to choose, with several for nearly any target market. While advertising costs money, there is simply no other way put strong messages in front of a large, captive audience as quickly as you can with advertising.
4. Build or buy a list. Building a quality list takes elbow grease, research, and time. If you are buying a list or lists, you can drill down on very specific characteristics, and it is important to take the time to do just that.
5. Stick to your guns. Once you set a plan, stick to it! Believe in it. Be agile, yet, do not let naysayers deter you from the path you have set for reaching your goals. How many times have you set a plan, followed the first few steps, then let someone steer you off path until you lose focus? Trust your gut, trust the people you work with, and stick to your plan. It’s the resulting consistency that breeds trust and confidence in you and your brand, and leads to a high quality audience, mailing list or customer list.
How to Become More Productive Instead of a Better Tweeter
Are you really so desperate to find an audience that you have made it a top priority to get people to follow you on Twitter? I like Twitter, sort of, but I use it in fits and starts. Or to be more precise, I use it when I have the time to use it. There are better ways to find an audience. The best way is to do something remarkable. People will then seek you out.
Steve Rubel says you should spend 15 minutes a day scanning the internet for unusual stuff that people may want to read and cannot find on their own because they don’t have the time. Do you have the time? I mean, really, do you?
And really, how much unusual stuff can you find when all of it is readily available to anyone with a connection? If we are all reading tweets about the same unusual stuff, how unusual can it be?
Add up 15 minutes a day, factoring in an extra 15 minutes per day of distracted reading time, and it is pretty easy to see that becoming a tweet star is going to cost you 2.5 hours per week. I can design a good logo in that amount of time, or write several blog posts, or even write a book chapter.
Can you be more productive with 2.5 hours of work time per week?
P.S. The genius in Steve’s article, IMO, is in setting up your iGoogle page in the way he recommends.
IBM Rewrites An Old Headline, and Does It Well
In the 1950s, IBM founder Thomas Watson, famously said “Good design is good business.” Truer words, regarding design, were never spoken.
IBM is now running an advertisement with the headline, “Green business is good business.” This is a smart redux because it is saying exactly the same thing as the original, yet it is updated for the current times.
Good design is nowadays green. Green business is good design.
3 Recent Examples of Poor Creative in Advertising
Poor creative can kill an advertisement before it sees the light of day. If you’re smart and working with an objective mind, you can catch the poor concepts before they ever reach a production stage. Sometimes they slip through anyway, as is the case with these three. This is the kind of creative that gives advertising a bad name; the kind that guys like Seth Godin and Joseph Jaffe might jump all over as a waste of money. And they’d be right in doing so, however, good creative could have made each of these a success.
1. One Laptop Per Child – From what I have read about this cause, it’s a great one. A true humanitarian effort to bring education and awareness of the bigger world to countries where laptops are not on every desk, much less in every school; where education is needed and power is hard to come by. The logo is pretty good too. The spot? A waste of marketing dollars.
As much as I love the cause, the spot does nothing to explain what it is, to convince us that it is money well-spent, nor that the child recipient of the laptop has learned anything at all by gaining access to technology. I found myself actually less convinced of the merits of the cause after seeing the commercial.
The child says, “Thank you for this laptop. You have changed my world.” How?? How did this laptop change your world? I want to know! I want to see what you’ve learned, what you’ve gained access to, how it’s helping to open up your future, or help your family or community. Give me something to believe in!
You can learn more about the good of this organization on the Wiki page, in about the same amount of time as the spot.
Verdict: A total waste.
2. Adidas Originals – Adidas current tv advertisement is a big, fat, loser. The spot shows a party with people suggestively jumping up and down, laughing, thumping to the beat, good times. Every single person at this packed party is wearing Adidas shoes. It closes with the fade-in: Adidas : Originals
It’s as if we were watching a very well-shot video of an Adidas let your hair down corporate party. If everyone is wearing the same shoes and doing the same thing, it should say Adidas : Conformity
This could have been a great ad, if only the brand messaging was aligned.
Verdict: Good concept, good cinematography, good energy, horrible close kills the whole effort.
3. Speak-Up Against Reckless Driving – Ad Council does some outstanding advertising (”Welcome Back Veterans” comes to mind), but this reckless driving campaign is out of touch. With the high quantity of campaigns Ad Council puts out, it’s easy to see how this one might have fallen through the cracks at the concept stage, but the script and art direction also miss.
You feel almost sorry for the whiner characters in these spots. Like, “Hey man, slow down” is sure to be heeded by any distracted or out of control young driver. No one would want that role in reality. The spots in this campaign present a cast of characters so devoid of likable personality that were it not for our instinctual value of the sanctity of human life, we could care less about their well-being. Note the missing rear-view mirror in the car, leaving the vehicle itself not even street-legal.
Missing mirror aside, the production itself is ok, though as the viewer, I am at a loss in discerning what the spots are attempting to achieve.
Verdict: Poor concept killed this before it was filmed.
Keeping Your Advertising on the Right Track
Advertising has gotten a bad rap by the very folks who have profited the most from it. Many companies who experience success in advertising also lose their shirt in it. There are two pretty simple reasons for that. They’re called perspective and ego. Keeping both of them in check will take you a long ways towards success in advertising.
Advertising has two big problems, both of which are actually caused by companies, not by the marketing method. The first problem is overspending. Advertising generally works best on a frugal budget. The less you spend, the better. Guerrilla advertising works best, even on a large scale. Think like a guerrilla marketer, and you won’t lose your shirt with each campaign. Instead, you will make your money back faster than you can with nearly any other medium. A couple of converted sales will quickly put you in the black with your campaign.
What happens when a company has a great success in advertising? They often lose perspective and go bigger. They buy more expensive media, try to reach a larger audience or market, and switch from practical, effective marketing to wow marketing. This is usually fueled by investment in ego, but it’s misguided and generally leads to disappointment, wasted marketing funds, and low response rates. There is rarely a practical reason to go bigger with ad campaigns.
Keeping your campaigns small allows you to target better, keep your creative more relevant and focused, more easily track results, and adequately handle the response. Importantly, it also helps keep your campaigns more agile.
Poor creative is the other big problem in advertising. Most advertising today is focused on making people look. That’s called wow marketing, and it doesn’t work. Making people look doesn’t do anything for sales. They may talk about the ad, sure, but it doesn’t change the way they think about anything. Engaging people on a wow level generates wow talk, but it doesn’t drive sales.
Good creative changes the way people think. It provides suggestions and new pathways. Good creative stimulates thought and action. It surprises people and literally changes minds. Good creative is relevant and truthful. It instills trust and helps people make decisions. Good creative changes inner dialog, which effects buying choices.
Is your advertising generating wow or effecting people’s train of thought?
Twitter Tweets Are Advertisements
If you hate the idea of advertising because you think it’s an interruption or it’s too expensive, yet you love Twitter, you are just going to hate this post. But you should read it anyway because it will probably help you.
Twitter is an advertising medium. It is very similar in nature to a magazine or blog.
It would be a stretch to call all tweets advertisements because advertising usually has a specific purpose, whereas a huge percentage of tweets serve no purpose whatsoever. Savvy Twitterers tweet with strategy and purpose, looking for a specific outcome.
Twitter purpose usually revolves initially around gaining more followers, much like a magazine attracts subscribers. Useful tweets help with that, much like great writing helps a magazine gain regular readers. After a user has amassed a large following, tweets become more focused on advertising a product, blog, site or other business.
Twitter’s problem as an advertising medium is that it usually provides a relatively small (less than 250,000), unfocused audience. You get what you pay for, which brings us to Twitter’s advertising advantage: it’s free. And that’s a large part of what makes it so popular.
People have been looking for the holy grail of cheap or free advertising for years. Sadly, it doesn’t exist. Even with all of today’s great social media tools, there is still no free shortcut to massive wealth. Twitter, although free in theory, is not a medium that typically generates direct sales. And the amount of time you spend on it compared to that of traditional advertising is enormous. Inevitably, that means the return has to be smaller than any other media with a larger, more focused audience, of which there are many.
You really have to be careful to limit your time on Twitter because you can waste a huge amount of time. It adds up fast. I recommend my clients spend a maximum of 20-30 minutes per day total on Twitter unless you are a social media consultant. If you spend 30 minutes on it, consider that your news-reading time for the day.
If you go into your Twitter time with realistic expectations, it can be a great advertising medium. Of course, Twitter is much more than an advertising medium.
Advertising Is Not the Problem. It’s the Solution.
If you want to see a problem with anything, you can find it. Adbusters has done a great job of pointing out that advertising propagates a societal problem of buying in excess. I fully buy into the concept that we buy in excess, however, advertising is not the problem. Ads cannot force people to buy. People make their own choices. People choose to be entertained by advertising, especially when it’s done right. Heck, even Adbusters advertises.
I prefer to seek solutions. Advertising is a great solution that works better than most other mediums. If you consider that nearly every communication is either advertising or marketing, it’s pretty easy to see which ones are the most effective in terms of improving sales or reaching an organization’s goals.
Advertising mediums include websites, microsites, blogs, videos, Twitter, print ads, direct mail, email, and a host of other methods. Is social media advertising? You bet it is. In the coming days, I’ll explore why all of these methods are considered advertising, as well as examining which methods work the best for increasing sales in the shortest time possible.
In the mean time, try thinking about advertising like you never have before. Toss out the idea that advertising is a waste of money, because that’s simply flawed thinking. Advertising works exceptionally well when it’s done right. And it isn’t too hard to get it right. The problem is most companies just do it wrong.