by christine | Nov 22, 2012 | Branding, Business Success, Interactive, Social Media
The Social Media skills now required to maintain a good social media reputation has evolved. Most of us (businesses and brands) have our social listening strategy in place, writing content and posting on our social media accounts. So…how is it going? Are you monitoring your accounts, interacting with your followers on each account? If you are, good. We all know that it’s imperative to listen to what your customers have to say… as this will keep your brand honest and transparent.
Does your social media strategy include the necessary social media skills?
Being proactive in your social media accounts has never been more important. With the daily launches of new social media blogs and sites, keeping on top of your brand’s social calendar takes time and resources. Don’t lose faith! These efforts can and will be reap Brand rewards in the end. Engagement with your customers is imperative to keep the “stickiness” on your sites and also loyalty and trust with your brand. More importantly understanding and knowing how to handling both positive and negative feedback properly can be indeed a powerful tool to gain loyalty from your target audience and enhancing their experience with your brand. Keep in mind these steps below to become socially proactive:
1. Proactive and engagement on your social accounts should be your primary measurement of how your brand is doing. Keep an active conversation with your customers, so when and if a problem arises you can respond quickly with a solution
2. Respond Quickly to all Social Media Feedback, especially negative.
3. Don’t script your response. Be human and sensitive… an actual “real” live sensitive caring person (customized responses will go a long way to creating a supportive community online).
4. Support your response with detailed information; again give qualified information to help turn the negative experience into a resolved, positive experience. (We all remember being on the other end of those endless customer automated phone messages…that keep telling us to press the next sequence of number’s to get help, but in the end, it feels like we are on a never ending carousel spinning round and round, and in the end we hang up out of frustration or just get lost in a loop of unhelpful automated annoying computer generated voices.) We want our customers to feel that someone is actually listening and with a positive timely response your customers will probably post a very sincere thank you back and become a loyal customer in the end.
5. Dedicated customer service email and resources are a must. In support to #3, you have to specifically set up for your social media accounts. This will help garner a great customer support service within your social media communities. You should allow for a dedicated resource for these platforms to monitor what’s being talked about online and also join in on the conversation to build strong relationships and provide positive customer experiences.
6. Be Honest and Transparent…this will go a long way for validating that yes we all make mistakes, but lets work together to fix it and make it better by actually listening to what your customers are saying.
7. Be Empathic, stay objective. Look at it from the consumers point of view, have all your facts and as said earlier try to resolve as quickly as possible.
Now to make it all work! Now that you have your social listening strategy, resources, and your social customer service in place you need to add some tools to help you get the edge on your competition by taking charge of your social media and your online presence. You can start with some free resources and or customized packages. No tools work the same, so do your research. This is just a small sampling of links below to get you started:
RSS Feeds, Google Alerts, Track Tweets, Comments and Discussions on fan boards, etc, and Netvibes
Want to know more about social media? Download Social Media Understood here.
Please feel free to add comments, tips, and suggestions; I always like to hear how other people adapt new strategies to their social accounts. And remember be Proactive!
by Miriam Hara | Nov 11, 2012 | Branding, Business Success, Creative
Christmas, Hanukkah and the New Year’s… unbelievable but true, the 2013 Holiday season is upon us and with it comes the annual dilemma: should we send a card via mail or should we send out a digital card?
Maybe it’s because 3H Communications lives in the “creative” world that we feel more angst about this question then most businesses.
If we send a classic paper card via mail… yes with an envelop and stamp… are we going to be perceived as old, traditional or outdated?
Well I have to say, there are 2 schools of thoughts and despite my love to integrate the new, to jump in and be an early adopter of all things in the digital communications playground, I would side with the classic…. an actual mailed card.
If your inbox is anything like mine, you’re being inundated with approximately hundred daily emails. I think I can safely assume that the last thing you and I want is another 30, 40, 100 emails from business partners, friends and suppliers adding to the already crazy inbox we have. Most of the digital cards I receive are amusing, although some are annoying with the imbedded music – but I hardly take note of them, or even view them properly. I just click and then quickly delete. I don’t keep them as they add more clutter to my day. Essentially my inbox at work is… well work – I don’t surf youtube or my personal Facebook page during my work day. When I do get the digital cards, I see from who it’s from and very often, I delete, even before the complete holiday wish is revealed.
Maybe it’s because I work in the creative field… but I believe that receiving a card in the mail still means something. For me it’s always a little moment of anticipation before you actual card is revealed. What’s the design like? What’s the message? Will the use of typeface and design wow me? And I always look at the signature, and if done with the right intent, a little special message that’s just for me! Makes me smile and it actually forces me to take a moment out of the day and “be”. Yes it’s traditional, but I feel it’s more personal. Someone actually took the time to sign it…. maybe write a personal comment… and yes give it to the support team to place it in an envelop and to stamp it. The little number of cards that I received last year were decoratively added to our office tree or added a colourful accent in my office. Granted, you can throw cards out immediately too, just like you can delete an email card, but cards, in my experience tend to stay around for the duration of the holiday season!
I can hear the opposing view saying that if a digital card is done well it will get shared… and I do agree… but still, as a marketer I do believe with so many businesses have going the route of digital cards, printed cards do stand out more and as a result, and in terms of marketing speak, your business will receive more share of “holiday card” mind!
Should businesses spend their energy and money in developing a branded holiday card or go the digital ? I would like to hear your thoughts.
by christine | Nov 9, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success, Creative, Design
As a creative person, passionate about digital media, graphic design and the visual arts, colour has always been an important factor in my work.
How colours interact with each other or to a specific object can be significant especially in design. The same can be said about how colour relates to your brand and its impact on the consumer and what emotive feeling will be identified with your brand. Will the perception of your brand be a positive or negative behavioural reaction?
Pairing the wrong colour palette with your brand can kill your identity. It’s important to know your target audience, culturally, geographically, gender, age, and also the purpose for your campaign so that you launch your business in the right direction.
Just by viewing a colour in a design, and how it interacts with your brand can completely change or send out a false representation of your brand to the viewer. Colour is such a powerful and important communication tool that it should not be neglected; it is part of our daily actions in life represented in religious, cultural, political and social influences.
Studies have shown when users are shown a bright red hue; it will create a physical feeling of anxiousness and an increase in heart rate. This would not be a good use of colour if used on the interior walls of an emergency room, but if the colour red were associated with food, it would be a positive action to a reaction. You want the consumer to feel hungry and in a response really need to go out and purchase your product.
There is so much more complexity to colour and colour theory and I could go on, but maybe I will save that for another blog.
*Just a note you may want to check out a few of my favourite artist’s that were really the pioneers with colour theory– Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc to name a couple.
Marc
http://www.franzmarc.org/The-Red-Horses.jsp
http://artsconnected.org/collection/111185/franz-marc
Kandinsky
http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/
by Miriam Hara | Nov 5, 2012 | Branding, Business Success, Social Media
With so much of business communications today being in the written channel, and so much of it being immediate with Social Media, the tone in which a brand communicates with is increasingly important. We all know that so much of what we say really comes down to how we say it. The same choice of words can come across as either complimentary or insulting. Ultimately, it’s all in the delivery.
Deciphering communication tonality in the digital space isn’t easy. The handling and implementation of any social media initiative (especially when it deals with a brand) is fraught with potentially explosive minefields. Brands are complex entities, and as such a brand’s attitude, style and characteristics must be taken into account with every Facebook update, LinkedIn response or blog post.
So how can you make the most of your Brand’s social media initiatives and business communications? By ensuring that you strike the right cord and the proper stance in all your online communications. Here’s how:
- Take a page or two from your marketing plan… truthfully. We all can agree that the social media channel is relatively new, while Marketing is not. Go back to the basics. What makes your brand special to its audience? Look to how your brand communicates in the more classic channels, such as print ads, radio ads or even packaging. If it’s a product, how does the package look? If it’s a service, what does the name and logo represent? If you’ve advertised in community papers or created radio ads, you already have a good basis of understanding of what your tonality should be. Are you casual? Formal? Sophisticated? Friendly? Is your brand body language open, informative and approachable or at arm’s length? Regardless of style, your brand must always be honest, straightforward and truthful.
- Understand your audience. Knowing who your target audience is… well, not enough. Like everything else in branding or business, understanding your audience on a deeper level is essential to your brand’s success. What makes them purchase your brand? What’s their style? Do they enjoy extreme sports? Drive a sports car? Like fishing? Answering these and other questions will allow your brand to connect with its audience and meet their expectations. If your brand needs to put on a suit or dress business casual, then your writing tonality should follow the same line.
- Follow the Brand Guidelines. If your brand doesn’t have any, then you should seriously consider creating them. It use to be that brand guidelines spoke only to the visual treatment of a brand’s logo. (typesetting, font, colour, etc), However today’s guidelines also cover brand voice and brand persona which are very good indicators and references for brand tonality.
- Stay consistent with your brand’s persona. Is you brand premium priced? Made in Europe? American? Canada? Is it an innovative product, or just a better or cheaper version of an existing one? All of these factors play a significant role in determining what your brand’s social media tonality will be.
- Take the lead from your brand’s website. It is important to understand and address the digital channel in its entirety. Your brand’s social media efforts must be an extension of your brand’s website. The tonality for the brand must be holistic. Websites should always be created with a sound understanding of brand voice and brand persona. If this is the way your brand’s site was written, you already have a good foundation for developing your style with posts or blogging.
Your brand’s body language is determined by your brand’s tonality. Make sure you’ve got the right posture to make sure your brand’s success in your social media initiatives.
by Miriam Hara | Oct 29, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success
The word branding is definitely a verb. It takes thought, intention and actions to turn a brand into a Brand.
If you take a product that delivers on its promise, give it a great name, an iconic logo and a fantastic well thought out tagline, you’re set – you have the makings of a brand. All of these elements are great, but quite frankly, if you don’t intentionally do, you’ll risk your Brand’s demise or fall short of your Brand’s potential. In order for a brand to become a Brand, it must in fact start to act. It’s important to not only look like a brand – it’s important to “walk” like a brand. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a corporate executive in charge of brand marketing; an individual trying to become a personal brand or a major chain retail outlet; the act of becoming a brand is essentially the same
In order for a product to become a brand and establish itself as a winning brand it must adhere to the following brand exercises:
Brand Consistency: Your audience needs to recognize your Brand instantly. How can they do that if consumers are always being shown inconsistencies in style, colour, tonality or voice. Determine what these brand layers are for your Brand and feature your Brand within the same context, consistently, consecutively and simultaneously. Brand can only be established if the message is always presented in the same way. There are no short cuts in developing a brand. Cost cutting measures early in the game will often harm the Brand’s development and stunt its growth… indefinitely.
Repetitive Brand Visibility: It doesn’t matter if it’s by placing a business card sized ad in the community paper or developing a full-scale national advertising campaign, whatever your Brand is about, its messaging must be consistent with every communications initiative. Think of it like filling a bucket with water, one drop at a time. All these drops will eventually fill the bucket. Branding is about repeating your message, in a variety of different ways. It doesn’t matter if it’s an event, social media endeavour, advertising campaign, premium giveaway or a website – all visibility goes into the same bucket.
Brand Originality: Dare for your brand to be “un”-ordinary. Yes, be over the top if needed – “extra”-ordinary. If you are trying to achieve your Personal Brand or launching a product, dare to be bold in how and where you communicate. Just like no two people are truly alike, the same applies to brands – no two are alike. Take one element of your Brand’s Persona (big or small) and blow it out of proportion. This refers to colour, typeface, logo, or even a sound logo. Whatever element it is, it must be your Brand’s and your Brand’s alone. This will allow you to “own” the market. Others can and will try to mimic your brand, but they will end up falling short.
Consistency, repetitive brand visibility and originality – these actions will turn your brand into a Brand.
by Miriam Hara | Oct 22, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success, Social Media
In the fast paced world of Social Media, every bit of knowledge to maximize the exposure of your blog posts is gold!
I found this infographic very interesting and useful. Thank you LaunchGrowJoy.comfor sharing this.
