Period Three Blog » Branding

Sep292009

The secret to credibility

Posted by Gene in Branding, Creating Community

We get asked often to “bring more traffic to my website” and one of the suggestions we often make is for you to begin creating content you can share with your customers. Sharing information about what you know and how you do things can often lead to more trust and repeat customers, it also can go a long way to making you an expert in what you do. What does that have to do with credibility? Here’s the thing, when you ask us to bring your website more traffic, what you’re really asking is bring more clients, or more conversions - traffic alone is not the answer to this. More traffic won’t hurt mind you, but what good will it do if no one thinks you know what you’re talking about or if they can’t connect with you. Here’s a secret formula:

I learned this from a post on problogger.net a while back. There is no overnight route to creating credibility, and you have to build upon your audience (client base) and grow it. What are the benefits of creating credibility for your website? Those would be two fold:

1) Gives you the ability to change user attitudes toward you:
Keeps you in a positive light, they feel comfortable interacting with you, they embrace your point of view.

2) Give you the ability to change user behavior.
They give you their personal information, they complete a transaction, they return to your site often.

Trustworthiness and Expertise are two pretty huge things to work on with every news release and blog post you make, it takes time and planning but it can be worth it in a huge way when you achieve it.

Keep in mind this formula is talking about creating the perception of credibility, you can easily reverse all your hard work in an instant if you don’t actually live up to what you’ve created.

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Apr162009

The TRUTH will always win in social media

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

The thing about social media is that it will expose you. If you are an awesome person who truly wants to help people or run a really great business it will show through. On the other hand if you are not so good at what you do, are unethical or make some mistakes you get exposed just the same. We have to take the good with the bad and learn to deal with it. Here are a couple of really recent examples of how this all works:

Amazon.com fails in customer communication
A seemingly harmless change to Amazon.com’s cataloging software caused “gay and lesbian themed books” to be lowered in ranking relevancy thus causing them to disappear from the website - which of course cries of censorship ensued. Instead of taking the problem in hand, responding clearly and concisely online. Amazon only offered “there was a glitch in our systems” as a response and then a full day later announced in a statement that it planned “to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.” That’s pretty much all we get on this from Amazon… It is amazing to me that Amazon would not take this opportunity to control the conversation online, they are leaders on the web after all. See #amazonfail for more on how this is progressing.

Even after it explained the scope of the problem, Amazon continued to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blowup, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

“Frankly, it’s surprising to hear that Amazon, which was a pioneer in the digital space, would miss this opportunity to react in real time and to manage this crisis better than they did,” said Gene Grabowski, chairman of the crisis and litigation practice at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington.

Read the full NY Times article where I get most of this from.

The DiggBar Hullaballoo
Digg.com recently released their DiggBar, I wrote a quick post about it on the P3 Blog here.

The DiggBar enables you to Digg, read comments, find related content, and share stuff from any page on the Web. And it’s presented in a short URL format, making it easy to share in emails, on Twitter, and via other services. - from Digg.com

It seems like a good idea to me. Though there have been very loud cries of outrage at the Diggbar and how to kill it. Digg has largely been forced to make changes that effect the way DiggBar works and i’m sure goes against their original strategy for it. This one is still playing out, people will not relent on this one, especially when there is a perceived danger to harming their website’s link authority in search engines. I know i’ll be waiting to see how Digg handles themselves and recovers from it.

Domino’s gets punk’d
Domino’s was blindsided by “Two idiots with a webcam and an internet connection” just a couple days ago (even though they said it wasn’t real). The two perpetrators have been fired and criminal charges have been filed. But like some have called for Domino’s needed to get active outside of just dealing the the “crime” itself. It looks as if they have posted a video from the CEO and in the past 24 hours have signed up for a twitter account @dpzinfo.

According to an article in AdAge when talking to Domino’s there’s “only so much a marketer can do” here was the prevailing attitude at first.

He [Dominos spokesman Tim McIntyre] said the company decided not to issue a press release or post a statement online. After all, he said, the company can deal with tens of thousands of impressions, but a strong response from Domino’s would alert more consumers to the embarrassment.

Mr. McIntyre, however, said the company decided that such a response would be akin to “putting out a candle with a fire hose.”

We’ve seen Domino’s turn around on this and start getting involved in consumer conversation on the web. Using Twitter is a great start, but the issue is cultural to big business (yes in IMHO any Domino’s chain is a part of a very big business…) Why should you be invulnerable to a customer not being happy just because you have hundreds of thousands of them. Does my opinion not matter to you? Thanks to social networking apps like twitter and facebook my singular opinion can now effect you - get ready big business!

The point is that as a business you have to be where your customers are, you have to listen to them in the way they want to talk to you. It’s hard to do that, but you have to do that. The bigger your business is the more you have to listen. The internet will only expose you for the truth of how your business operates, it can’t do anything otherwise because even more so today than ever the internet is powered by consumers - and it is only going to grow more in that direction.

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Apr062009

North Charleston Coliseum Logo Contest is Bunk!

Posted by Gene in Design, Branding

I HATE design contests. I hate them because I am a designer and “contests” like this North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center Logo Contest hurt our profession. It hurts it because it means that they do not value the work we do as designers. They don’t even think what we do deserves compensation outside of 2 tickets and a $50 gift certificate, maybe a grand total of $150 (and that’s probably generous on my part.)

Ask yourself, would you offer a spec contest for legal advice, tax services, computer services, building repair, or any other professional service? No, you wouldn’t. Because their time has value. The same as ours. (taken directly from the NOSPEC contest protest letter.)

Below are the details of their contest. Hey, it’s 3 logos by the way, not just one. Holy cow! Does the winner also get kicked in he head too?

North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center Logo Contest

WHO: The North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center

WHAT: We need three new logos: one for the Coliseum, one for the Performing Arts Center, and a combined logo for both facilities.

WHEN: Monday, March 30th-Friday, April 17th (A winner will be announced the week of April 20th.)

WHERE: Please send all entries to logo@coliseumpac.com

WHY: We are in need of a fresh, new logo.

Here’s the link to the full page: http://www.coliseumpac.com/contest.php

@BlueIon had linked up to a great letter to the North Charleston Coliseum & Performing Arts Center, you can read what they posted here. I am sending one myself, i’m going to use the NOSPEC contest protest template, I encourage anyone of you who is a designer to do the same as soon as you can.

If you are confused about speculative (SPEC) work, here’s a great explanation.

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Mar172009

Jimmy Fallon - I think he may understand…

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding, Social Web, Twitter

I wasn’t too excited about Jimmy Fallon’s late night helmsmanship when it was announced a few months ago. I thought he was a bad choice to take over Conan’s old show. However the more I learn about the man the more I start to like him and am beginning to dig on his show. See, I think he may just “get it” after all:

I know I talk about Gary Vaynerchuck a lot. The reason I follow him is because he understands social media/networking, he talks about it, he’s done it, he’s worked the trenches to build his empire fan by fan, the hard way. Jimmy Fallon is considerably more well known than Gary Vaynerchuck, by far, but he still works hard to reach each fan and follower. I’m sure he’s gotten a leg up by being on Saturday Night Live, but he had to work to get there too. My point is that he could easily just sit back, work the show and let it go where it takes him. Instead he works the social networks, he’s frigging huge on twitter: @jimmyfallon where he’s one of the most powerful twitterers ever. It’s really him twittering too, not some marketing agency, he messages plenty of people back, legend has it he’ll even respond to your emails when he can.

I don’t think the above clip is a photo-op, I think it’s really his personality to do stuff like this. If he keeps this up, he’ll build a fan base that will last him forever across any medium he lands in.

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Mar132009

Wufoo loves their customers

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding

I recently received this hand written thank you note from Alex of the Wufoo.com team, out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever. I wonder how long it takes them to do these? This is a wonderful way to keep me interested and signed up for their service, just out of pure loyalty now. They’ve made me an evangelist for their service with just this one little note. There’s a great lesson here in marketing if you’re paying attention.

Oh, and if you’ve never used their service before, you should. I’ll let them explain what they do:

What is Wufoo? Wufoo strives to be the easiest way to collect information over the Internet. Our HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.

It really is very easy to use wufoo. If you’re about to do a survey or need a quick form to collect data, use them…

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Jan302009

Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape

Posted by Gene in Business, Marketing, Branding, Social Web

More Gary Vaynerchuk @Web 2.0 Expo NY this past year, I can’t get enough of what he’s selling (not the wine) but the message.

Gary really hits it home here for me. Your product/service is YOU, you have to be honest and work hard and just make sure you like and respect the people your working for or with.

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Jan122009

New favicon for Google

Posted by Gene in Design, Branding, Details

I am not really sure why Google has changed their favicon again. If memory serves they just created one a few months ago. I thought it was pretty horrible. This one is no different. Looks like the same lowercase g but with primary colors encircling it. This kind of thing normally isn’t a big deal, I mean favicons are favicons, but with Google any small change is big.

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Aug272008

Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuck

Posted by Gene in Business, Branding

I am no way a Wine snob, I know very very little about it. But I feel like I can sort of hang now, thanks to Wine Library TV’s host Gary Vaynerchuck. I started watching his video podcast about a month ago and have just gotten hooked. My point isn’t wine or even Gary, but more how he uses the web and social media to help his business grow.

He started out getting into the family business of selling wine, over the years he’s used his video podcast to help sell wine. He’s passionate about wine and loves to talk about it, he shows it, every week. He doesn’t make any direct money off the video podcast he does it to push his personal brand which in turn helps sales. He uses a barrage of online media; facebook, twitter, iTunes, etc. He’s everywhere, even on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. A year or so ago he purchased the social web-app for wine tasting Corkd.com, a free resource but again helps to push his brand.

Check him out, but aside from that, just pay attention to how he markets himself.

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Mar032008

Noted: Cars do not have dashboards, they have interfaces.

Posted by Jay in Business, Design, Branding, Usability

The new for 2009 Dodge Ram Truck, is by all respects, a handsome truck, if you like things like that. The interior, especially, especially looks like something out of a Mercedes or Lincoln or something. I can’t imagine getting my greasy paws all over that nice thing after working all day, but lets face it, most of these things are daily drivers, not all around utility vehicles.

Anyway, the main point of this post is that one of the features of the 2009 Dodge Ram is the “Driver Interface“, previously known to me as the “Dashboard”.

It seems we have come full circle. Cars once had dashboards, and web designers took the dashboard metaphor into the realm of interface design, and now cars have taken interface design into the realm of the actual, physical dashboard.

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Feb292008

Logos of the Techies

Posted by Gene in Design, Branding

The Neatorama blog has a really interesting article discussing the history of tech companies logos. It’s pretty neat to look back over the past as these companies logos/brands developed. My favorite is the Apple logo (of course).

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