Business Breakthrough Marketing Blueprint

Friday, November 21, 2014

Apple's First Social-Media Guru on the No. 1 Way to Market Your Brand

Peter Friedman ran social media for Apple before it was even called social media. Working directly with Steve Jobs starting back in 1984, the Harvard Business School grad oversaw AppleLink, which spun off as the beginnings of AOL (America Online).

Live and online from about 1985 to 1994, AppleLink was Apple’s first online community for users, third party developers and Apple product dealers across the world.

Fast-forward to today, 18 years since Friedman, author of The CMO’s Social Media Handbook (LiveWorld, 2014), left Apple to launch LiveWorld, the social media content company he is still chairman and CEO of today. We’d say the leap worked out quite well for him.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company has grown to become one of the most trusted names in corporate social-media marketing. LiveWorld’s client list reads like a Silicon Valley A-List roster, boasting heavy hitters like Intuit, Cisco, Hewlett Packard and Flipboard, to name a few. There’s also Dove, Pfizer, General Electric, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and, well, you get the point.

So, what's Friedman's top social-media tip for building buzz around a brand? Party like a rock star.

Create a fun, upbeat environment -- on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, on all of the social platforms your brand has a presence on -- in which your current and potential customers can talk to each other. The key, Friedman says, is to encourage them to chat up your brand together, as if they were at a killer party at your house.

“My favorite metaphor for social-media marketing is that you’re throwing a party,” a Fedora-topped Friedman told us this week at the C-Suite Network Conference in Marina Del Rey, Calif. “When you build a really good party, everyone wants to come.”

But no one wants to hang around at a party where the host gets up in front of everyone and talks about himself the whole time. “Everyone will say, ‘Whoa, what an ego this guy has. He doesn’t even care about us. His schtick is getting boring. Let’s leave and we’re never coming back.’”

In social media, think of your target customers as your party guests, as potential brand ambassadors mingling amongst each other. Foster connections and conversations between them by posting social content about topics that resonate with them 80 percent of the time and only weave in brand messages 20 percent of the time. It’s a delicate but critical balance.

“When you have a good time at a good party, people go, ‘Wow! This brand really understands us. They make a great party. I want to come back to this brand’s party and bring my friends. Then people will equate their positive online experiences with your brand with your products and your services.”

Think about it. What kind of social media party are you throwing for your customers?

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Thursday, November 20, 2014

Interview: The Richard Branson Business Plan

Richard Branson on his Business Plan!

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Capture, Engage and Convert Customers With Visual Branding

In the time it will take you to read this article, there will be over 900,000 tweets on twitter and 7.5 million posts on Facebook. With that much content generated, how does a business get noticed and stay relevant? The answer: visual elements.

Human beings are wired to react to pictures much more so than text alone. We did, after all, spend tens of thousands of years enjoying the vast and beautiful open expanses of new breathtaking landscapes long before we used letters and numbers to communicate.

This also explains why our attention has shifted so dramatically over the past few years from blogging and text status updates to picture updates, and why social-media sites such as Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat have burst on to the scene and become our favorite social sites. In fact, Instagram will soon surpass Twitter in the number posts per day.

Of course, many companies do and should continue to produce meaningful and engaging content, but to get noticed, adding a visual element to your posts will not only encourage and generate more engagement and sharing, but will also help to further establish your brand.

Creating visuals can be intimidating, especially for the “creatively uninclined.” It does not need to be, however, as long as you put some thought up front and create the foundation for your overall visual branding strategy. Here are four tips and resource to getting started.

1. Colors and patterns

Maintaining a catchy color scheme will not only grab customers' attention but also create a consistent message about your brand. It is best to stick to no more than four colors, all of which speak in some way to your company’s brand and mission. Do not choose haphazardly, as color combinations can send their own message.

Using an online resource, such as Paletton.com, can help you find complimentary blends of colors by experimenting with its color wheel. A site such as DeDraeve.com can take a digital picture and instantly provide you with a matching color scheme. Remember to keep track of the HEX or RBG code as to be sure to use the exact colors in all of your online and print marketing.

2. Images

After you have selected a color scheme, it is time to consider images for your visuals. You will use these images to add emphasis to a message or as backdrops to content posts.

If you are using your own photos, be sure to use a camera that can create high-quality and high-resolution photos. If you lack the equipment (or the photographer’s eye), a number of sites offer stock photos for sale or lease. I have used and have been happy with Dollar Photo Club, which for a small fee provides access to millions of great stock photos.

You can also find some free selections, such as those found at Death to the Stock Photo. If your budget can support it, Getty Images has an absolutely fantastic selection of amazing photos, for sale or for licensing -- but they are not cheap.

To give your photos a personal touch, consider running them through a "filter," which will give them a unique look and feel. Specific apps, such as Photoshop, can do this for you, but you can avoid the cost and opt instead for the standard filters on apps such as Instagram. To get a little more daring, consider one of my favorites, Pixlr-O-Matic (available online or as an app) for thousands of different filters that are easy to use.

Again, be sure to have a consistent look and feel with each of your images.

3. Layout

Another way to differentiate your content and your brand is to use a specific and consistent layout for your visuals. For instance, including a watermark logo in the same corner of every picture or post will help consumer instantly recognize the content as yours.

One company I like is Canva, which provides a huge assortment of template layouts for almost all major social-media channels. It also has a huge assortment of free designs and photos, and upgrading is rather affordable. Again, with your picture filters and color scheme, consistency is key for building that visual brand identity.

4. Typography

The style of font that you use with your brand (called typography) is as important as colors when trying to create a consistent message. Carelessly slapping Comic Sans on your website and marketing materials can send the wrong impression.

Instead, research your options and determine which fonts go best together. Also, make certain not to choose too exotic a font, as some web browsers will not recognize the font and the effect will be lost.Google Fonts is a great place to find free fonts as well as the "code" needed to integrate it into your website.

At some point, it does seem altogether likely that the Internet will simply explode under the intense pressure of tens of millions of photos being uploaded every day. Of course, I jest.

But the reality is that we will continue to prefer visuals with or in place of our content, simple because we are able to consume and react much faster to visuals than plain text. If you do not believe it, then consider the study that found that presentations with visual aids were 43 percent more effective in persuading audience members to take a desired course of action.

In the end, just be sure to follow these tips and create effective visuals, as visuals that miss the message can do more harm than good.

What do you think? Do you have more advice or resources for your fellow entrepreneurs?

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Monday, November 17, 2014

Start Preparing Your SEO for the 'Internet of Things'

Get ready for an online marketing revolution that’s coming in the form of smart home technology, or what’s now evolved into a greater concept: the Internet of Things.

Smart home technology has been around as long as the Jetsons -- as early as the 1960s. Although it has generally been regarded as a luxury for wealthy homeowners, things have changed. Today, electronic devices ranging from thermostats to door locks are Wi-Fi enabled.

The term “Internet of Things” is a new name for an old concept many of us are already familiar with -- the smart home. Say hello to an entire world of interconnected smart residential devices designed to make our lives easier, more efficient and more connected to the internet.

The Internet of Things has recently been in the news since Google announced last month its agreement to purchase the burgeoning home control company Nest Inc. for $3.2 billion, making a gigantic leap into the smart home industry, as well as an interesting, albeit implied statement on the future of online search.

If Google has any idea what its customers want, paid ads probably won’t show up unsolicited on the company’s smart devices. However, they will likely show up for the same reasons they always do -- people are either using free services that are paid for by ads, or they are performing Google searches. And this is where smart devices in the Internet of Things get interesting for SEO marketers.

SEO professionals are soon going to need to optimize for smart things, or the Internet of Things as a whole. Either way, a new crop of devices will be connected to the internet, and Google is going to be there.

Of course, search won’t be the main function of a smart thermostat or refrigerator, but if you need to search for a recipe while you’re in your kitchen, you may just tap into the most convenient web browser available, located on the fridge right near your stove.

This changes SEO. Once enough people have smart devices in their homes, mobile and desktop will no longer be the only two SEO realms that marketers will need to worry about. Residential will become the third.

Predictions for residential SEO:

Local search optimization will become even more important.
Local search will split into two arenas: residential and mobile.
Psychographic data will grow in value as residential marketing increases.
Content marketing will dominate residential SEO efforts.
Ecommerce SEO will continue to focus on mobile and desktop search.

Of course, only time can tell how the Internet of Things will really change SEO. The most important thing for marketers right now is to keep smart devices in mind. You may not see the explosion of residential SEO for a few years, but you can definitely start preparing for the inevitable, and that means preparing a mobile content strategy.

So start thinking residential, marketers! You can begin by investing in your mobile content marketing efforts. Residential will surely be similar to mobile, so there has never been a better time to start focusing on mobile SEO.

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