Google’s previous attempts at social networking generally weren’t received well by users.  FriendConnect had major issues with browser coding, Orkut never really caught on in the U.S., and I think we all remember the Buzz privacy scare last year.  I have high hopes for Google Me – this could be Google’s chance to tie all of their various outlets into an effective central hub.

Google’s varied demographic also sets a solid foundation for building a social network that can appeal to a broad range of individuals.  Businessmen and businesswomen use services like Google Docs to organize important information, Google Calendar for scheduling, and AdWords for marketing purposes on a daily basis.  College students, moms, and celebrity bloggers often check their Gmail accounts, read the latest stories on Google News, see a video on YouTube, or learn something new on Google Health, and then discuss their findings on Blogger.  Google owns all of these elements and I believe that Google Me could effectively incorporate them under a single, central site.  Think of it as Ping.fm on steroids that incorporates Google sites instead of social networks.

In a recent article on BNET, Ben Popper illustrates this idea perfectly and makes a few predictions of his own:

For Google, Zynga’s games are an important piece of the social networking puzzle. The company will never be able to premier a product now that, standing alone, can hope to challenge Facebook. Instead Google seems to be working in reverse, establishing the individual pieces one at a time and tying them together later on. It’s already got photos, micro-blogging and location based services. The key will be pushing an integrated suite of these tools on platforms like Android and Google TV. If Zynga becomes built into these offerings on a base level, and prompts users to login with their Gmail accounts, it could go a long way towards helping the search giant construct its own version of the social graph.

If Ben is correct and Google is, in fact, reverse-engineering their own social media platform, then Google Me could stand a chance against Facebook.  CNN Tech reports that over 75 million users actively use Facebook’s Zynga games on a monthly basis.  If Zynga offers unique features to Google users, then I expect a large portion of Facebook users will go check them out immediately.  New games, along with integrated email, calendars, documents, chat, photos, and videos is an enticing opportunity for all Facebook users to try something new.  Whether or not Google will integrate Zynga into Google Me is still unconfirmed, but think of the opportunity that Google has to connect all of their services under a central social network.

Posts are too short:

Now I am no Leo Tolstoy, I certainly err on the side of getting to the meat of the information and leaving the reader with a funny quip, question, or something to chew on… but some of the posts I read are hardly posts at all.  They’re more like tweets, that ran over a few characters.   Two sentences does not a news item make.  When working on an entry it is wise to think broadly, beyond what you the writer finds contextually relevant, instead think of your audience.  Do they need back story, is there content relevant form another source that they may find interesting (linking is a great habit to get into), or perhaps you might just need to get a little “wordy” as opposed to right to the point.

The point being, you as the administrator of a site have the responsibility to keep entries engaging and, moreover, entertaining.

Poor Layout

Even if your content is perfect to the letter, poor spacing, broken images, misplaced images, or poor page formatting can be a death knell for a news item / blog entry / post.

The solution to this is to ALWAYS preview your entry.  I’ve probably previewed this entry 3 times already, just making sure the text is the right size, images are well placed and symmetrical to the entry, and things generally “look good”.

We’re all in a hurry, so I can understand getting the content up and posted, but, again, the goal is to entice the end user.  The last thing you want is to revisit an old entry on your site and say to yourself, “What was I thinking?”.

Fake Authenticity

In all types of writing its important to have a “voice”.  Many times, we are asked to write something on behalf of a larger entity, be that a Fortune 500 company, or a band out on the road.  Problems arise when your voice doesn’t quite match up with the brand you’ve been asked to portray.  A band doesn’t need a news entry to sound like a Fortune 500 company, and a Fortune 500 company doesn’t want to sound like a band.  Know your audience, know who you’re ghost writing for, and get a sense of what that messaging should sound like BEFORE you put fingers to keys.

These days, people are so over-assailed by marketing messages, they’re learning to tune out and ignore the stuff that’s not real. If you don’t seem real, you get the same penalty as those who aren’t real: You get ignored. (hat tip)

No SEO

…. But what if no one reads it???  Even the most well written, authentic, perfectly laid out post will get lost in the shuffle if it’s set up to fail.  Always be sure to tag your posts, link out to relevant sites, other posts, irrelevant posts.  Try to get your posts fed to other outlets.  There are a million ways to improve SEO… or at least ten.  Make an effort to get your message heard!

No Follow Through

This is most definitely another common mistake that I make.  I have every intention of doing a “series of blog entries” which turns into one entry, and no follow through.  If you set the reader’s expectation, meet it.  It’s as simple as that.  If you say there will be a new video on the site every week, make sure there is something there.  If it’s news entries, a blog series, photo galleries… pick your poison.  If you can get users into a routine of visiting your site, you’re winning the battle.  The best sites on the net churn out content at a constant pace, keeping the site both “sticky” and fresh.

If you’re diligent enough to avoid these pitfalls, it is possible to gain a fervent followers of your content.  Feel free to add to the Common Content Mistakes in the Comments section!

Often I meet people who hate using the word “brand” or “personal brand.”  They think the term is a load of bollox and is either meaningless or too confining.

I think the word does have merit.  Sure, it gets thrown around by every wanna-be marketing professional out there, but it does serve a purpose.

Cutting through all the hype and BS, the word “brand,” really boils down to one thing: the expectation your fans/friends/consumers have about you. It’s that simple!  You don’t need to be a marketing professional to understand it.

Think of any service or product and you will have an expectation.  If I say the word Pepsi or Disney or Southwest Airlines, a thought enters your head and you have a perception of what those companies are or should be.  These expectations can be as flexible or as inflexible as you’d like.  They can vary by the thousands, and no one is more right or wrong than any other.

Big corporate brands spend millions to help shape and form your expectation.  They create packaging, logos and commercials because it benefits them if everyone has the SAME thought on their product or service.  Over in the creative world, those expectations are built around the content that is produced.  Mainstream artists may spend more money and attention shaping their brands, but it’s not necessary.  Peter Gabriel fans “expect” him to take many years to create new music, but know that it will be inventive, creative, and different than what came before.  Stephen King has been labeled by some as a horror author, while others know him for his dramatic (Shawshank Redemption) and escapist (Dark Tower) works.  Both have content that form their respective “brands.”

As individuals, we can also create and manage the expectations of others.  Are you funny?  Kind of a dick?  Punctual?  Professional?  Casual?  Do you proceed with caution or jump face first into new projects or ideas?  The answers to these questions form an expectation about you, and thus your personal brand.  It can be whatever you want it to be, and you can make it as important or as unimportant as you choose.

So the next time you hear the word “brand,” don’t think of all the marketing hype that goes along with it.  Simply remind yourself that its an expectation, and not a dirty word.

However, every now and then I stumble upon a survey or poll I feel IS worth a look.  Such was the case when I discovered this SOPHOS poll on Jason Calacanis’s blog:

60% of Facebook users consider quitting over privacy

Is this a truly scientific poll?  No, and SOPHOS admits as much.  But it DOES provide an incredibly compelling look into where facebook currently finds itself.  You may recall I recently blogged on where facebook stacks up in the forest of social media.  Since then things have only intensified as more users become disillusioned, mainstream media picks up the story and Mark Zuckerberg refuses to care.

This poll, while not scientific, gives us a glimpse into the current user-base.  I take away two things:

First, the % of users who have already quit the service is slightly higher then the % of those who have stated they will be staying.  These numbers also follow standard polling and survey results where “absolutists” at both ends are in the minority.

Second, and more importantly, there is a HUGE chunk of users currently on the fence deciding whether to leave or stay.  A combined 60% if you believe this poll.  The real number may be lower, but I don’t believe by much.  The biggest chunk of facebook’s active user-base are casual users; people who joined the service “because their friends or family were on it” and have no deep loyalty or brand-love for it.  THESE are the people that facebook needs to worry about.

The longer and more mainstream the negative publicity against facebook becomes, the higher the likelihood this “middle ground” of users will be swayed to delete their accounts or simply stop using them.  A “dead” account is just as threatening to facebook as a “deleted” one.

Facebook has survived scuffles in the past because their user-base was smaller.  This time may be different.  This time they pushed TOO far and risk offending too many average people in the middle, people who leave a service for the same reason they joined it….because their friends did.  The market is incredibly fickle, and contrary to what others might have you believe, facebook does NOT have a guaranteed spot at the table.

There is a lesson here for brand managers, marketers and even politicians.  With every fan-base or consumer group there are passionate people at opposite ends of every decision.  However, it’s the people in the middle (less passionate but greater in number) who truly decide things.

We’ll continue keeping an eye on this group as the evolution of facebook continues.

We look forward to working with The CO in the future, in guiding their marketing and assisting them in turning their web presence into a revenue vehicle.

launch project

We were able to build upon the established brand of HypeGenius, utilizing their existing logos and type treatments, while implementing new icons and site layout for a more effective communication of their company message.

We look forward to working with HypeGenius in the future, both as a client and a partner organization.

launch project

What are "Zuck's" real intentions?

But lately I’ve been feeling like we’re all just hoes to the social media company pimps.  We give more and more time, attention and information to these services, and I want to ask a question that most people seem afraid to:  are these services really worth the short-term gain at the risk of supplanting long term brand equity?

Put another way, for a brand (or even you as an individual) is it worth using these services in lieu of a website, app or interactive model that you’ve built and control yourself?

Yes, twitter and facebook have millions upon millions of users.  Yes, you can use these services to find people you care about all in one spot.  Yes, they’re FREE, and no they don’t require a whole lot of effort.  And with the rapid growth of facebook, it would seem a moot point to even consider NOT using it.

However, we’ve been down this road twice before.  The first time was with a little website called Friendster – a service too ahead of its time, in my opinion, yet one which built a solid userbase of young people and new media professionals.  They thought it would last forever until suddenly, a newer, sexier model came along.  This new network had more features than Friendster and EVERYONE you knew was suddenly using it!  It might be hard to remember, but myspace was once this service.  It was hip, easy, free and you could make it your own little place on the web.  Or so we thought because once again a NEWER network came along and “EVERYONE” got in facebook’s back seat, leaving myspace cold and lonely on the side of the road.

I bring this up because countless entertainment and business brands threw millions of dollars and man hours into myspace, making it their holy grail of online marketing.  Artists dropped their official website in favor of a myspace page.  Whole businesses were born off the back of myspace and there were even professionals in Nashville excited about the arrival of “myspace music charts” saying they would “probably end up replacing Billboard and radio airplay charts.”

It saddens me because that same energy, time and money could have been spent making existing websites better and more scalable.  Brands could have discovered new ways to increase traffic to their existing hubs.  (To be fair, many artists and businesses DID use myspace as a limited tool to drive traffic back to an official site or offer, but these were the exception to the rule.)

So now here we are, repeating the same mistakes with twitter and facebook.  Too many people are once again putting their lives and business hopes in the hands of proprietary networks they don’t have any control over.

I know what some of you will probably say…

“That’s the game, you just have to move where the market takes you.” You know what, I don’t buy that.  Why should you have to follow the whims of whatever company is in vogue at this moment?  Why can’t each of us build a brand and a platform that are one in the same?  The technology is there!  It’s free!  It’s open source!  There’s NO logical excuse for why this can’t be done.

So what should we do?

All of us should continue to use these services, but recognize they are supplementary tools at best.  And as tools, we should always consider how they can help drive traffic back to a hub that YOU control.

If twitter goes away tomorrow, what would you do?

If facebook started charging $30 month to use the service what would you do?

These AREN’T rhetorical questions.  Social media companies can do what they like, and in their path to monetization WILL do whatever THEY feel is in THEIR best interest….not yours.

I want leave you with Molly Wood’s recent CNET rant about facebook’s latest features (click here for that article).  It’s very worth your while, but if you’re too lazy/busy then I give you this gem of a quote:

“There’s nothing wrong with making a LOT of money. But you should not, Facebook, get to make that money by tricking me into making personal information public, by creating an increasingly baffling web of privacy-violating loopholes, and by opting me in to every new moneymaking scheme you come up with. That’s how you lose user trust, and losing user trust is how you lose users.”

Do you really want to build your business strategy around a company like this?

Many sites with great potential end up living up to their expectations.   They utilize the technologies provided them to the utmost using every possible widget, social network, free/paid SEO optimization tricks, and, in some cases, a full on marketing team.  The content they provide is compelling and engaging, and I want to return to the site, because I know each time I’ll learn something new about the brand.

Some used their site to as more of a “Billboard” for their brand, but gave little else in the way of news and information.  A few of these sites fell short when it came to the content on their site; information was disjointed, there was no clear focus, no direction, and what resulted was a bit of a mess.   These sites typically give you a tidbit or two on the brand, ask for little in the way of a call to action and send you on your merry way.

A few of these sites fell short when it came to the content on their site; information was disjointed, there was no clear focus, no direction, and what resulted was a bit of a mess.  There was structure and layout, the opportunity to have a compelling site that urged me to return, but somewhere along the way the content got stale, or the core message was diluted.

There is obviously a spectrum of sites, from great to befuddling.  More times than not a site is defined by content.  What are you trying to say about your brand and how do you convey that message?   What makes a site “sticky” (makes you want to return)?  What makes you want add to the “bounce rate” (get outta there fast!).   Succinctly put, what does your content say about your brand?

The most important function of a site, is less about layout and more about content.  Finding content is extremely important, but you can find someone to assist with where the content pulls into the page.  Once the user has figured out where they’re supposed to look for content; what are you saying?  when did you say it?  how am I supposed to take this information and act upon it?

What: Make sure your messaging is clear and concise.  It needs to keep a consistent tone and theme.  If you’re a sophisticated business, don’t have a top news item that is jovial in nature.  If you’re a comedy tour, don’t be all button down business.  Know your tone, convey your brand, and keep with the theme.

When: The most compelling reason for a user to add to your “bounce rate” is to see the most recently updated item dated July 2009.  Regardless of how well you’ve conveyed your message you’ve already told the user your site is not important to you.  People rarely go back to sites that they know won’t change.  There’s a reason Facebook is the most trafficked site on the internet: constantly updated and changing content.

How: Now that a user has visited your site and taken in your content, what are they supposed to do with it?  Have you given me an easy way to share the content on your site (via Digg, RSS, etc), Have you asked me to make a purchase or sign up for a mailing list?  Always be thinking of the end user, and how to direct them to action.

Keeping these things in mind when updating the content on your site can lead to a great deal of success.  The combination of quality layout and great content will result in a higher probability of a repeat visitor.  Repeat site visitors are more likely to become fans or customers, and those lead to revenue.

At Strategic Blend, we advise and guide clients to optimize their content, build a clean platform to display the content, and discover ways to monetize the fan/customer after they’ve been attained.  We strive for complete optimization of every site, letting the message (content) of the brand speak for itself.  While we are adept in making the site beautiful in appearance, it is our fervent belief that quality content will build a loyal fan/customer base.

If you’d like help on optimizing your content, let us know!

A well phrased rebuttal to a recent blog entry over at Midem.net

The original article can be read here.

Below is a comment, emailed to us from a client:

The average email marketing campaign has an open rate of (generously) 30-40%. I agree that the email list is important, but in this day and age it’s also important to have a strategy outside of an email database (social networks, PR involvement, artist actively pushing traffic at shows and in interviews)

I respect the success of Amanda Palmer, but also realize that she has ~400,000 followers on twitter… she was extremely active pushing followers to buy her album. And extremely active in promoting her digital presence in interviews and public appearances.

It’s a coordinated effort, not just email. I think that’s really important to remember. Email is a dying marketing tool, because the use of that channel has become extremely watered down by other brands trying to accomplish the same thing as the artist.

If you’re looking to put together a coordinated effort, utilizing all that the web has to offer look to a professional marketing firm dealing with artists and entertainment to direct your campaign. (might I suggest a company we went with http://www.strategicblend.com)

An offer that includes analytics, demographic information, and a full out assault on getting the message out to your fanbase.

I’m certainly not saying email isn’t important, but it has to be a cog in the machine, it isn’t the machine itself.

I couldn’t agree with this more.  Furthermore, it’s important to understand that digital campaigns have to be sincere to the artist.  I really appreciate Emily White (the author of the original blog)’s comment that “It is crucial that the artist has input in the mailer.” The artist must be involved, be active, and be plugged in.  If you aren’t working with an artist that is willing to promote themselves digitally, don’t invest a great deal of your marketing efforts on the digital facet of your strategy… period!

If you’re going to utilize a digital strategy, make sure it’s comprehensive!  We’ll be happy to help

Their new blend features video walk-through of products and services, a clean layout for information, and a blog section utilized to show how the service can be optimized.

We’re extremely proud to work with the folks at nimbit!  Let us know your thoughts on the new site!