Posts Tagged ‘denver’

I don’t think it is a coincidence that we are seeing a plethora of monotone-style designs over the last few years. Simplicity, depression-era styles, a harkening back to our comfort points, denim, cotton, blues faded.  All reminiscent of hard work, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, a more wholesome time.

What is the recession teaching us?  We don’t need as much stuff, flash, we can recycle, reuse, scale back.  Ralph Lauren is at the forefront of this movement. When watching his Spring 2010 fashion show last fall I saw uniquely American themes emerge.  It was a reminder that we can be as resilient as our grandparents.  That denim is yummy again.

And this seems to be the design that has emerged out of forced budget cuts, looking to save money in any way possible.  Orange on orange, green on green, different shades of gray.  All of this means a 2 color process when printing, instead of a 4 color process.  It means adaptability.  I find I am most creative when I am told to come up with something but I have to abide by major constrictions.  This is how inventions are born and great ideas come alive.

Um…how is it the end of the week again, let alone the end of the month?  Oh, well.  Time to round up what we’ve noticed in the realm of marketing, social media, and brand strategy the week of January 25:

Hyperlocal:  I finally gave in and joined Foursquare this week, amid a huge buzz around the growing power of hyperlocal social media applications.  This coincided nicely with Twitter’s (Denver-snubbing) rollout of local trending topics,  Yelp’s rollout of sundry cyberstalking technology for its app, and an extremely thought-provoking article by Andrew Hyde on the implications of this technology (and why he’s opting out).

Hyperhyped:  In case you were in a remote cave this week, I’ll break the news…Mac announced its iPad technology on Wednesday  to great hubbub and furor.  Cue the inevitable Mac/PC mockery and bickering between me and Juli (a Mac evangelist who eventually bemoaned the technology’s lack of camera and lame failure to properly use the space of the tablet).  And cue rabid fanboys, drama about its ill-conceived and poorly-tested name, and users delighted (hey, maybe it will improve AT&T’s sucky service!), bummed (wait, it won’t save print media?), and confused about various features and prices (or lack thereof).  Which all begs the question…isn’t the hype kind of the point?  Success or failure, the iPad controversy/expectation/spin machine has people talking, speculating, and refreshing their favorite sites.  Oh, for an audience of millions.

Hyperhelpful:  As websites cut the b.s. and pare down the heavy Flash and SEOverload for more nimble, flexible content management and simpler messaging, we’re encouraged to see more focus (and buzz) about helping others.  More and more, the businesses who catch our limited attention and keep it are ones that have honed in on the ways in which they serve their customer bases.  When you get away from service, you get away from your voice and your value…and even worse, you risk alienating your base.  Here’s a great article on how the helpful effect actually boosts credibility in the social media sphere (via today’s excellent SmartBrief on Social Media, one of the must-reads in my crowded inbox).  Want some ideas on how to leverage social media and Web tools to the advantage of all?  We’ve got your back.

What’s your favorite story of the week?  Let us know!

Many of my clients and friends know that I sold a book in 2009…and that I then had to write the book per my Byzantine contract with HarperCollins.  What you may not know is that writing a book and learning the business of publishing has given me a huge amount of insight into the other businesses I work with and, by extension, my own.  Here are some highlights from the journey:

If you’re gonna do it, do it right.  Lyrics from a Wham! song?  Yes.  Good advice?  Yes.  When I decided to take the plunge and follow my dream of getting published, I did it the long, hard way.  I researched agents, wrote a killer query letter, and suffered through a failed attempt to sell a similar book before landing this deal.  It took three years, but it was more than worth it.  My book is going to get the audience…and the chance…it deserves.

Know your audience.  One of the first questions I ask my clients is “who’s your audience?”  When they don’t know (or don’t want to bother finding out), I know we’re in trouble.  The same thing applies to writing a book.  Luckily, having a crystal-clear picture of my audience and my ideal reader has been a great organizing principle as I write.  When I get lost, I think of my ideal reader and what she wants to read.  This works equally well in marketing and business.  If you lose sight of your audience, you can’t be surprised when they don’t respond to your message.

Know your limits.  I admit it:  I’m a workaholic.  Adding this project (a massive undertaking that my business partner has started referring to as “Erin’s pregnancy and childbirth”) to the already-huge workload of running a start-up was slightly ridiculous.  I’ve managed to do it, but there have been bumps, primarily three bouts of bronchitis that finally necessitated a solid week of rest without any work whatsoever.  If I could do it again, I’d set stretch deadlines and more realistic ones to keep myself better-paced and better-rested.  I see this tendency in the owners and employees of the companies I work with…people who tend to favor work rather than work-life balance.  Everyone has limits, and that’s okay.  Better to set an attainable goal and reach it than one you can never meet.

The best work is collaborative.  Can I tell you how scary it was to receive my first reads and edits on The Heroine’s Bookshelf? I’m talking white-knuckled, terrified reading as I searched for the worst possible rejection of the work I’d labored over with such love and care.  Though I’ve been a professional writer for years, I really dreaded the editorial process before it began.  But going through the process has reminded me that this book is a team effort.  It wouldn’t have sold without my agent’s hard work or my editor’s championship.  Once it’s complete, I’ll rely on legions of copy editors, designers, typesetters, publicists, sales staff, and others to help make it a success.  The pleasure of the process…of opening yourself up to criticism and change…is profound.  And I find it’s the same for my clients.  It can be scary to bring in a consultant, to stare change in the face and back it up with that checkbook.  But once the process becomes collaborative, you usually have the support and insight you need to keep on going.

What have you learned from the projects you pursue outside of work?

Wanna learn more about my book?  Do it here!

Image courtesy of Library Mistress

It’s been a day since Facebook overhauled its privacy policy, and if you’re anything like me, your news feed is inundated with complaints, confusion, and furor.  I’ve read a lot of misinformation as to what Facebook is up to and what those concerned about their Facebook privacy should do, so here’s a quick aggregation of what I’ve read and learned over the last few days:

What Facebook did: On December 9, Facebook began rolling out a privacy overhaul.  The evidence:  A recent letter from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO…and the banner that will appear on top of your page announcing the new privacy settings once the rollout reaches you.

What Facebook really did: Facebook’s new privacy settings are the social networking juggernaut’s entry into the world of public sharing.  The evidence?  More of your information is defaulted to be shared with “Everyone.”

What “Everyone” means now: NEWS ALERT – “Everyone” in Facebook now includes Google and the rest of the world.  I repeat:  “Everyone” really does equal “everyone.”  If information is tagged for “everyone,” that means that Joe Blow and his mom can read it…even if it’s a status update, photo post, or comment that used to be hidden under your Facebook veil.

Two other important privacy changes: Facebook has eliminated your option to allow applications to access or not access your personal information.  Using an application now defaults to allowing access.  In addition, Facebook does not give you any way to control access to pages you’ve become a fan of.  Hence, if you are a private fan of a pro-choice organization but present a pro-life face to the world, or would die if your mom found out you’re a rabid fan of naked Frisbee, expect that information to be loud and clear from now on.  Moral:  Friend, fan, and use applications wisely!

What you can do: If you object to any information being shared or indexed on Google, go ahead and set all of your privacy settings to “friends” or “friends of friends,” whichever level you’re comfortable with  (You can find these controls at Settings/Privacy Settings/Profile Information).  Don’t forget that Facebook’s new settings also affect your photos.  Also, you may want to uncheck the little check box reading “Public Search Results” under Settings/Privacy Settings/Search.

The silver lining (sort of): Along with these freaky, Big Brother-esque changes, Facebook has launched one long-sought-after tool:  the ability to determine what level of access you want to give to any individual piece of content.  Now, if you are planning a suprise party for a friend and want venue suggestions from other friends, you can block the birthday boy from seeing your post while allowing others access.  To make use of this feature, hit the little “lock” icon at the bottom of your status update box and choose accordingly.  Note:  this feature does not appear to be rolled out in its entirety yet, but stay tuned over the next days.

Still confused about Facebook’s new privacy settings?  Find good rundowns and rants at Mashable and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  Happy (safe) socializing!

Image courtesy of ardenswayoflife

As a marketing and brand strategy person, one of my chief responsibilities is to stay up to date on trends, techniques, and news in the industry. In the course of my Internet travels I run across all kinds of companies that have invested in some kind of Web presence…and that turn me off.  Here, in no particular order, are three mistakes that belong on the wall of shame:

The lights are on, but nobody’s home.  Have you ever gone to a fancy-schmancy website, only to get the feeling that it was designed and implemented by ghostly phantoms who disappeared soon after they hit “publish”?  Over the years, I’ve come to respect marketing as a living, breathing entity, much like a company’s business plan or the business itself.  If you’ve never bothered to update the age-old news on your home page or fix the multitude of broken links, the time is now!  You can’t afford to lose a client who gets bored by stale or broken content.

I don’t care.  You’d be surprised how many marketing pieces are shamefully inaccurate or boast horrid typos and grammatical errors.  I was recently at a workshop sponsored by a highly respected community organization and presented by a company that boasts a long client list and a great pedigree.  Surprise!  The collateral they left on my desk had not one, but four simple typos that, frankly, made the company descend a few notches in my estimation.  Is anyone perfect?  No.  Does spell-check exist for a reason?  Yes.

You’re gonna have to find the baby somewhere in the bathwater.  There’s a reason designers love white space.  It helps point the eye to important information, creating a pleasant user experience.  If your site is so cluttered with badges, feeds, useless graphics, widgets, ads, and irrelevant text that I can’t figure out who you are or why your services can benefit me, I’m gonna move on along with my now pitifully addled and confused impression of your business.  As Dorothy Parker said, “Brevity is the essence of lingerie.”

Photo courtesy of bolobilly

Spring 2009 is all about social media education, and Twitter is on the tongues of everyone from devoted power-users to confused newbs who can barely use a mouse.

Despite all the hype, news programs and even devotees haven’t quite hit their mark.  I keep running across the same question over and over again…why should I care about Twitter?  Who gives a hoot about whether you had a croissant for breakfast, anyway?

In lieu of writing a thesis on the subject (and if you really want to hear the advanced reasoning behind my use of Twitter, pretty please come to my new Twitter class June 25 and July 9), I’ll give some simple answers.

Why should you care about Twitter?

It’s all about conversation.  If you aren’t having a conversation with your potential clients and colleagues via social media, you’re missing the boat.  Twitter doesn’t just give you an unprecedented chance to engage with your base…it allows you to start, shape, and exert a degree of cotrol over the conversation that just can’t be achieved by a press release, a sound bite, or an advertorial.  And the options are endless:  you can talk directly to your base, ask them questions, gauge their opinions, solicit their feedback, be helpful and offer advice.

It’s happening.  Whether or not you like it, Twitter has taken off in a big way.  Does every business need Twitter?  No way.  But don’t dismiss it because it’s new, trendy, and admittedly overhyped.  The amount of creativity and excitement generated by Twitter is truly energizing and engaging…if you know how to use it properly.

It’s opportunity.  Opportunity to find out what your customers and your colleagues care about.  Opportunity to make mistakes, hone that brand, and get deep into voice and vision.  Opportunity to dip your toe into a huge conversation and watch it morph before your eyes.  Opportunity to be on the cutting edge before it changes into something else (just look at the evolution of hashtags over the past few months). And, yes, opportunity to get business.  I can count twenty or more instances in which Twitter has brought me business or allowed me to refer business to someone else in the last two months alone. Now that’s opportunity.

Sure, you may think you don’t care about whether your client had a donut or a croissant for breakfast…until you use that fact as the launchpad for a personal conversation.  Twitter can seem scary:  it’s immediate, vast, and fast.  It’s also vibrant, thrilling, exciting, maddening, and hilarious.  Go ahead…dip that toe in.

Readers, why do you care about (or shun) Twitter?

Photo courtesy of godsmoon

I’ve been spending lots and lots of time on Twitter lately (@vococreative’s the name if you’d like to follow) and am continually amazed by the creativity and passion being brought to this deceptively inane program by its millions of users.

Unfortunately, all the Twitter hype is made even more confusing by a growing universe of Twittiquette that is very, very easy to violate.  My recent Social Media for Mere Mortals class has prompted me to think about the most blatant violations I’ve seen of late.

Here are the top 3 Twitter mistakes I see on a regular basis:

1.  An all-or nothing mentality.  As with other marketing attempts, people tend to go whole hog or not-at-all.  The result:  schizophrenic tweets.  If all you talk about is yourself and your business, there’s no room for dialogue or relationships.  If all you do is shout out to your friends with endless @ messages, there’s no way to get a good sense of who you are.  If you tweet 92 times in one day and 2 the next, we can’t figure out what the heck you’re doing.

2.  Bad etiquette.  Calling out other users for flame wars?  Tasteless.  Failing to credit others when you retweet a message?  Lame.  Forgetting to use the @ symbol before names on a regular basis?  Thoughtless.  Auto-DMs and spammy repeat postings?  Passe.  Twitter etiquette is still a developing field, but it’s definitely becoming more standardized.  If you can’t bother to take the time to familiarize yourself with the lay of the land, should you really be tweeting at all?

3. Timidity.  In a world where  follow count is king and it’s all about who you know, there’s no point in being bashful.  Go ahead, make some friends and followers!  Sitting back and keeping your Twitterverse to your known friends closes you off from the wacky fun that is Twitter.  And it won’t do your business any favors, either.  Be bold!  Have fun!  See you in Tweet Town!

What Twitter mistakes tick you off?  Sound off in the comments!

Image courtesy of grendelkhan

Thanks for hanging in during the hiatus…I’m feeling much refreshed after a severely needed vacation.  We will return to our regularly scheduled blog postings on Monday.  In the meantime, here’s a drive-by glance at this week’s two biggest stories in marketing and brand strategy:

Twitter is on fire:  You know Twitter’s hitting the bigtime when a Twitter race between two public entities is front page news, the local news starts running fluff pieces on Twitter, and Oprah, ambassadress of all that will be embraced eventually, finally relents and throws a few Tweets to her followers.  (We’re loving Twitter here, but all this coverage is a huge sign to be on the lookout for The Next Thing…)

Crisis management is a whole new ballgame, folks:  The nasty Domino’s YouTube scandal is only the latest in a series of online gaffes and frantic scrambling.  (Remember Tropicana, the Motrin Moms, and the Whole Foods CEO’s lame astroturfing?)  Ironically, the big D apparently plans to use social media and SEO to improve the image spit upon by its own employees.  Though the best offense is always a good defense, it’s fascinating to see crisis management adapt to these let-it-all-hang-0ut times…who will be the next victim?

What was your favorite story this week?

I frequent many Yahoo! groups and bulletin boards frequented by writers and small business owners.  Lately, among the laments about the demise of newspapers and the perils of a shaky economy, I’ve been hearing an interesting war cry:  “Social media is a huge waste of time!!! It will distract you!!! Don’t listen to its siren song…it will destroy your marketing, your career…everything you’ve worked so hard to establish!”

I personally think that you can’t afford not to participate in some form of social media, especially in a world that’s ever more populated by Net-savvy, time-crunched people.  However, it’s a tool like anything else in your marketing arsenal…only worthwhile if you use it wisely.  Here are three ways to know when to rein in your social media use in favor of more traditional marketing means:

You are unable to manage your time.  Some people are able to resist the call of a blinking Tweetdeck and a buzzing iPhone.  Others, sadly, are not.  If you’re unable to manage the amount of time you spend using social media, consider limiting it to a certain amount of time per day (timed, with a timer) and pledging to spend an equal amount of time on the marketing messages you used before you converted to Twitter or Facebook.  Yes, this may involve picking up (gasp!) the phone.

You are undercutting your existing marketing.  If your many profiles are not customized and integrated in with your existing brand, you’re wasting your time.  Sure, you may be able to better interface with long-lost-childhood-friend X, but you’re spinning your wheels in terms of your marketing.  Don’t have time to brand your social media or give thought into how it might integrate with your existing marketing strategy?  Then don’t do it.

You are uninterested or undercommitted to the marketing you did before adopting SM.  Yes, social media is slick, instantaneous, pretty, and even inexpensive.  But if your social media activities have replaced the marketing you did before you logged on, be honest with yourself.  Have they really yielded the return on investment they should?  Have you abandoned sucky marketing in favor of micro-efforts that won’t ever pay off? If the answer is yes, it’s time to reassess.  Social media should be part of a marketing plan…not the entire plan.

Simply put, social media without strategy might just be a waste of time.  Interested in figuring out how to use it to your advantage without losing your mind?  We’re giving a seminar in Denver on April 20 that will help you with jus that.  Click here for more information on Social Media for Mere Mortals.

Photo courtesy of bogenfreund

Mondays have that spinny, reeling, to-do-list spitting out tasks kind of feeling, don’t they?  Luckily, VOCO has condensed today’s must-reads into a short and sweet list!

• PR is the new marketing:  A nice vlog on the intersections of two former cousins…now conjoined twins?  [via SmartBrief on Social Media]
• AdWeek has released its Magazine Hot List for ‘09.  What’s hot:  Fast Company and Wired.  What’s not:  anything that can’t (or won’t) adapt to changing times.
• Are we “exquisitely, irretrievably f*!ked“?  You be the judge.
• Say it ain’t so:  Google has a “paralyzing lack of design focus”?!