What Hitchcock means to your branding

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

When I was in college, I took a series of English classes where we learned to study symbolism in novels and film. The idea was to look for a particular recurring object within the work, and then use the instances of that object to extrapolate some higher meaning beyond just the obvious storyline. So, for example, we could argue that Alfred Hitchcock’s use of containers (baskets, trunks, overnight bags, apartments, etc.) in the film “Rear Window” symbolized various states of confinement and/or freedom. The movie, therefore, wasn’t just about what happened when Jimmy Stewart spied on his neighbors. It was about confinement, containment and freedom.

What’s critical about this type of exercise is that the final answer to the question, “What is the film about?” could be different for each person. Because each person brings to bear their own set of experiences with and understanding of containers.

The same concept holds true for your business’s brand. Your brand is not your logo, or even your logo plus your tagline. Even though you worked really hard to perfect those things, they are not your brand. Your brand, in fact, isn’t anything you can see or touch. It isn’t anything that you, per se, tell your customers.

Your brand is the sum total of your customer’s experience with your business. It’s the impression they have formed over time about your worth and value. It’s what the logo means to them when they see it.

If you aren’t consistent in delivering the experience you want your customers to have, they will each have their own interpretation of what your business is about. And you won’t have a brand.

Of course, it’s equally dangerous to deliver a consistently poor experience to your customers. Because then you will have a brand, but it won’t be the one you want.

Look beyond your logo. What is the brand you want to build around your business? How consistent are you in delivering the experiences that will allow your customers to arrive at this interpretation? What’s holding you back from being more consistent?

Photo from whirligig-tv.co.uk.

In remembrance

Think before you write your ad copy

This post originally appeared on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

Gather any group of employees and ask them to contribute their thoughts to developing a marketing campaign, and the vast majority of them will focus on the look of the brochure, the name of the celebrity spokesperson, and the “big event” you’ll stage where you invite the media. That’s because writing the ads is the fun part – it’s what nearly everyone thinks the Marketing Department does, and since Marketing folks seem to have a lot of fun, they’re eager to take their turn doing “what Marketing does.”

What they don’t think of are the questions that must be answered before you try to sign the local weatherman to drive sport-drink sales. These answers make up the creative strategy behind the funny ads.

Creative strategy means developing the over-riding message and tone of a series of related marketing pieces, so that the end result is a marketing campaign that sends an appropriate, cohesive and resonant message to the targeted audience.

So what are the hard questions that make up the creative strategy?

1. What is the goal of the campaign? Write a goal that includes a specific and measurable result. Expecting something measurable from your marketing is reasonable. It puts you one step ahead of those competitors who are just trying to “raise awareness.” (Examples: increase leads in the pipeline by 15 percent; increase sales of sports drinks by 10 percent.)
2. Who is the audience? Be specific. “Current customers, potential customers, investors and employees” is too broad for one marketing campaign. While your brand should certainly be consistent across these groups, you need to identify a primary target for your marketing campaign. (Hint: the goal of the campaign will likely drive, to an extent, who your target market is.)
3. What is the message you want them to remember? You’ll want your audience to remember something important about your company. What is it? (Hint: your brand position will dictate this in part.)
4. What is the action you want them to take? This goes back to your measurable goal. The action might be to visit your website, to call for an initial meeting, or to place a direct order. It will depend on where the marketing pieces fall in your overall sales process.
5. What style or tone of message does your audience respond to? An elderly white male will, obviously, respond to a different style or tone than a 20-something Latina woman. You may find the style or tone easier to nail down if you can determine the message first, as the latter may suggest the former.
6. What media do your target audience members pay attention to? It doesn’t matter if you have a great idea for a viral video to put on YouTube… if that’s not where you target audience spends their time, there’s no sense in putting your money into that video.

Of course, your strategy must work to uphold your brand. (And, toward that end, you must be confident in what your brand is.) Can you name a company that can’t seem to decide on a creative strategy?

Photo from the Flickr stream of Sirkus.

You know more about marketing than you think you do!

This post originally appeared in longer form on an older blog, MarketingIdeaBlog.com. I am re-publishing it here because I believe the information is not only still valuable, but because it can help readers better understand my approach to business communication.

“I know nothing about marketing!”

Is that the lament that brought you here? If it is, take heart: you know a lot about marketing, but much of it is so ingrained that you don’t even realize you know it. That’s because your definition of marketing is probably limited to something along the lines of, “Marketing consists of advertising, sales letters and cold-calling.”

To convince yourself that you do, in fact, know something about marketing, just broaden your definition. Marketing is, actually, everything you do to attract, serve and keep your customers.Think about that. If you truly view marketing as “everything you do to attract, serve and keep your customers,” that means it encompasses everything from what you’ve named your business to what music plays when folks are on hold to how efficient your refund policy is to how personable your receptionist is.

By this definition, marketing includes prospecting, advertising, promoting, publicizing, producing work (or delivering goods) and maintaining customer relationships. And I’ll bet you know something about each and every one of those.

Of course, broadening your definition of marketing isn’t just an exercise self-esteem-building (”Hey, maybe I do know something about marketing after all!”). There’s a trade-off for that little ego boost. When you see marketing for what it really is, you elevate it to its true level of importance. And then you realize you can’t relegate it to the back burner. And you can’t skimp on resources devoted to it.

And then you begin to get a headache, because you recognize that this little blog you stumbled onto is going to encourage you to spend money. And time. And talent. On marketing, that thing which you know nothing about. Aren’t you glad you’re here? Me, too!

Photo from the Flickr stream of Cowbite.

Twitter is eating itself

Interesting phenomenon that can only happen on Twitter. Bob Barker was a “trending topic” on Twitter today – meaning he was one of the most-often tweeted topics of the day – because he hosted a television program called WWE Raw. (The wisdom of that has yet to be determined.) Then later, he was STILL a trending topic because so many people thought he had died because they could see he had trended – so they’d log into Twitter and search for his name, only to learn that he wasn’t dead, he was just on television, and then they’d tweet about it. I’m now curious to see how long this will continue, and I’m naming this Twitter phenomenon “Barkering” – as in, “to Barker.”  If you Barker on Twitter, it means you trended, and so many people thought you died because you trended that they continued to tweet about you, which kept you trending in a continuous loop.

Blog production toolkit: quick summary of tools

In the Blog Production Toolkit Series, we’ve gone into some detail on the why’s and wherefore’s of using various tools to enhance our blogging productivity. In the final post of the series, I’ll simply round up all the tools we’ve mentioned so you have them in a single handy list.  Of coure, these are just the tools that make MY blogging more productive and efficient – if you have other favorites, be sure to mention them in the comments!

Blog Architecture and Mechanics
WordPress software – self-hosted version (www.wordpress.org)
Domain Registration and website hosting services (www.bluegravity.com)
FTP software for transferring files to your webhost (WS-FTP by Ipswitch)

Essential WordPress Plugins
Akismet – fights comment spam
FeedSmith – RSS feed management
SubscribeRemind – Builds your subscriber list
All-In-One SEO Pack – optimizes content for search engines
Sociable – Reminds readers to share
WordPress Automatic Upgrade – Upgrades your software quickly
WP-DB-Backup – manages database backups

Writing Tools
MS Works – free Windows word processor
Windows Notepad – free Windows text editor
WordPress Visual Editor – built into WordPress

Photo/Image editing Tools
Picnik.com – free web-based photo and image editing
Corel Paint Shop Pro – cheaper, leaner version of Adobe Photoshop

Featured post: New book captures the spirit and diversity of women riders

Below is the lead to a guest post by author Christina Shook, who has just published a photographic essay book, Chicks on Bikes. The full post is linked at the end of the excerpt; the full article originally appeared on Biker Chick News.

Sisterhood. A community. Of women. Not a sewing circle, not a women’s auxiliary club, not a mom’s club. There is a community of women bikers. Today women have formed organizations for every interest under the sun, no longer limited to domestic, nurturing or supportive activities. These women have taken up a lifestyle that is still a largely male domain and claimed their space and culture within it.

Few groups have the high-impact visibility of a pack of women riding up on their bikes. Few events have the singular sense of power that wells deep within as dozens of women roar their engines at the beginning of a group girl ride. It is a screamingly , throbbingly, wonderful feeling. It’s awe inspiring and fascinating to behold.

Read the full post on Biker Chick News.

Family follows mom's surgery via Twitter – but what if she had died?

Before Twitter, the best you could hope for waiting for word on a family member undergoing surgery was a couple of updates from the surgical team. Now, assuming your loved one’s having surgery in a Twitter-savvy hospital, you can get a real-time play-by-play of the procedure.  An Associated Press report about a Cedar Rapids woman whose family followed her procedure via Twitter states that more than 300 tweets were sent over the course of the three-hour surgical procedure.

While I think this is a great use of Twitter – family members said it was better than “sitting and not knowing in the waiting room” – I do wonder what would’ve happened if something had gone wrong during the procedure. Would the surgical team keep tweeting? Or, in the interest of protecting the patient’s privacy, would they have come out to update the family in person?

Twitter’s potential as a real-time news feed has been well-documented, from the shootings at Virginia Tech to tracking California wildfires.  However, I think there is still the potential to become too focused on the technology and lose the human side of communication. I’d hope, that if I’m one day sitting in a surgical waiting room, I don’t find out my loved one has died by reading it on Twitter.

Blog production toolkit: writing and image editing tools

So far in the Blog Production Toolkit series we’ve looked at the basic technical tools you need to run self-hosted WordPress, and we’ve studied my list of must-have WordPress plugins for increased blog functionality.

Now let’s turn to the creative side of things. These tools help you manage your writing and images more efficiently so updating the blog doesn’t become a chore.

Posts and Pages – the Writing

WordPress Visual Editor – of course, the WordPress software is centered around a console where you can write and edit your individual posts and pages, upload photos or graphics from your computer, and click to publish. For quick posts, this is the one and only stop you need.

I don’t do a lot of “quick posts,” though, so I have a three-step process that I call “write-strip-post.”

Write – I use the built-in free word-processing software that comes with Windows, called MS Works, to compose my posts. That’s primarily because for me, the writing is still the most important part of the process and I want to be able to focus on it and give each post the attention it deserves. Personally, I can’t do that with all of WordPress’s bells and whistles surrounding my composition area.
Strip – I then copy and paste my finished post into Windows’s free text editor, Notepad, to strip out any formatting that MS Works may have added.
Post – I then copy and paste the clean text from Notepad into the composition window in WordPress. I add any necessary formatting and effects such as bullet points or italics, add an image (or 2 or 6, depending), check my tags and assign a category, preview, and click the Publish button all in WordPress. This step usually takes me about two minutes, unless the preview reveals some necessary editing.

Photos and Graphics – the Imagery

No question that photos and graphics enhance all but the shortest posts – they can provide a visual representation of the concepts you’re writing about, they can help draw the reader in to actually read the post, and they can serve simply as a way to break up a sea of words in a longer post.

Most likely, you’ll need to crop and possibly re-size your images before uploading them into WordPress. I use two tools for this:

Picnik.com – a free web-based photo editing system that performs simple functions quickly and easily without installing software.
Corel Paint Shop Pro – Yes, Adobe Photoshop’s the industry standard. But I’ve been using PSP since I first started building sites in 1996 – it’s cheaper, and later versions rival the more expensive products in terms of features. In fact, I still run an older version of this program because it’s lean and simple.

Once a photo is cropped and sized appropriately and saved to your computer, you can upload it directly into your post using WordPress’s image-loading feature. Personally, I use my FTP software to upload the image into my image directory, then use WordPress’s “add image from URL” feature.

Five tips for in-person networking

Those who are immersed in online networking might find it hard to remember that there’s also offline networking – you know, meeting actual people at an actual event?

Here are a few tips for making the most of an in-person networking event:

1. Be authentic – don’t adopt some kind of weird, not-the-real-you persona when you attend an in-person event. Just be yourself.

2. Be genuine – when you’re talking to someone, don’t constantly look over their shoulder to see if someone more interesting is approaching. Give your full attention to the person in front of you.

3. Find a legitimate reason to share your contact info – when talking to someone you haven’t met before, don’t assume they want your business card just because it’s a networking event. Think about how you can be of value to them, and offer your card after expressing that potential value.

4. Ask lots of questions – Making small talk can be agonizing, especially when it feels forced. Instead of the usual weather-related stuff, why not ask some leading questions of the person in front of you? What’s new in your industry? How has the recession impacted your business?

5. Become a resource - Write a short “nice to meet you” note to new people you meet and send it via email, and include a link to an online article that’s relevant to something you discussed with them.

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