Social media icons

So talk about Social Media is everywhere. The chatter is so loud that you now think that you must at least see what it is all about and how it can help your business. Some of you have already thrown your hat in the ring and have been online for quite some time now, twittering, linking In and building your fans on Facebook. You have heard that some companies are connecting with their clients and some have hundreds, even thousands of fans who provide them with instant feedback and engage with their products. You now realize that, although scary, you must create your own presence on the social media sites. But you are not sure how to proceed or what your strategy should be. This article is written just for you!

We help many clients launch their websites, after which they look for creative ways to announce to their clients or potential clients that they are now online and open for business. Sometime it is a redesign, showcasing a new look and feel with additional products and services they want to promote. Either way, they understand that they have to promote and market their new website. Social media is becoming more often than not, the low cost method for small to growing businesses to promote and market their business. So the question is…Is social media right for your business?

To answer that question I posed above, start where I always suggest you starting, with your clients.

1. Assess the concerns of your clients.

Who are your clients?
Is privacy a major concern for them?
Will it compromise their trust in you if you post information online on one of the social media sites?
Are their regulatory and compliance issues that you must be concerned about?

If you answered yes, then a social media site may not be right for you at this time.

I read in my recent AdWeek that even the financial services industry, which is very concerned with compliance issues, has decided to address social media because they see it as a valuable tool in staying connected with their customers. Vanguard and the SEC is teaming with a guru of social media to host a Webinar for others in the industry to show how to handle legal and compliance issues so businesses can take advantage of the opportunity to strengthen connections and enhance relationships with current & potential clients. So consider very seriously how social media can enhance your business.

2. Do they help you promote your brand?

How do social media sites help you to promote your brand? It doesn’t matter how fabulous you think it is if no one else gets it and doesn’t engage with it. What do people think about when they see your brand?

Well by engaging on a social media site you can begin to build a personality for your brand. Make sure that you create a business presence on the social media sites. Don’t blend business with personal. If you have friends from high school that post a lot of information that you don’t want your client’s to know, please don’t invite them to post on your business page. But even if they don’t the general rule of thumb is “anything posted online is available for anyone to read and is public domain, even if your privacy settings are set high”. You never know when a “friend” could leak personal information.

Don’t post anything on these sites that you don’t want the world to know.

With that said it is important to remember that building your brand does require you to personalize your posts. Don’t sanitize them so much that you cannot connect with your clients. Create your own distinct voice. If you are witty, then be funny. If you are a budding photographer, add candid and unusual images to each of your posts. If you are creating products, post a picture of it. If you love making training videos, link your YouTube video about a new training to your page. Draw your audience in using what you are good at.

3. How much time is required?

Understanding what is required; in terms of time commitment to effectively use these sites, will help you better develop a strategy to promote your brand. As a small business owner, we all struggle to find time to do all of the necessary things for our business. Except this task could pay big dividends for your business. The recommendation is to post daily or at least a few times a week. Keep in mind that people are on these social media sites everyday, responding to and engaging with or “following” their “friends”, and there is always an opportunity to reach your audience. Some questions to consider…

Do you have time to post something to Facebook everyday or a few times a week?
Do you have time to do it or will someone on staff be responsible and entrusted to carry out this task and to monitor your social media presence? Answering these questions will help you better plan how to proceed. Also look for time saving methods, like connecting your Facebook page to your Twitter account so when you post on Facebook, it will automatically get posted to your Twitter account.

4. Familiarize yourself with the advantages and disadvantages of each of the social media websites

(quick guide below).
As you begin to use each one, you will soon discover which ones add value to your bottom line. If time is an issue for you, maximize it by focusing your strategy on the sites that give you the best quality connections.

Quick Social Media Guide to the Most Popoular Sites

ReEmergence Facebook page

Facebook
• Most popular of all of the social media sites. As a direct result of this fact they have had the most privacy issues also. These include compromising of their Chat most recently and issues with the release of your information to other partners.
• Allows you to create posts (400 characters) letting your “friends” know how you are feeling or doing at any particular time.
• Don’t just post, engage! Facebook is a great place to start a conversation on your services or products. You want to hear what your clients think. It is immediate feedback and for some reason people feel comfortable giving feedback to you in this format that they will never email or give to you face-to-face.
• You must set up your privacy very carefully because the default may not be suitable for your business.
• Allows you to customize the way your page looks. Has integrated a lot of tools for custom development such as Facebook Markup Language (FBML).
• Once clients find you or are invited to join your network they can engage with you by posting information. Everyone in your network or who “Likes” your business will also see their responses. This can be a sticky point if you want to retain privacy of your clients.
• Allows you to create ads targeted at your potential clients. You can be charged per click or per ad. These targeted ads can be extremely effective in building your fan base or the people that “Like” your business.
• Develop a social media guide for your employees. Let them know that anything posted on a social media site could be potentially used against them, especially if they impact your brand detrimentally. Unfortunately some people don’t realize that everything online is open to scrutiny no matter what the privacy settings are. Information is leaked out all the time by “friends”. The rule of thumb is this “Assume everything you say can and will be used against you” this is especially true the more successful you become.
• Facebook provides statistics on how your network is processing. This feedback is very helpful to gauging the success of your social media strategy. You can learn how many people joined your network each week, the quality of your posts (rating), number of posts on your page, and other details.

ReEmergence Twitter page

Twitter
• Allow you to create quick posts (140 characters or less), also known as a “tweet”.
• You can “follow” others and invite others to “follow” you so they can stay updated on what you are doing. The better the quality your posts, the more people will want to “follow” you.
• Allows you to link to others twitters in your “follow” network and even links on the web, but it must remain in the character limits.
• Twitter does allow you to customize your look and feel so you can brand it your company (but there are limitations and parameters you must adhere to.)
• Twitter’s network sometimes can get overloaded and you may not be able to post or even work at times. I have heard that they are working to address these issues.

ReEmergence Linked In page

Linked In
• Primarily used to make business or networking connections.
• Used by a lot of companies who are looking for talent to hire. Historically known to have a great pool of highly skilled and educated connections in their database.
• You build a network of current or past colleagues who can recommend you or your work to others in your network. Your network can grow very fast if someone you are connected to has a big network. You can then request to be connected to everyone in their network.
• It’s true power is in it’s ability to allow you to search for just the right company resource you are looking for. If they are in your network, you will be able to read recommendations from other people in your network who you may know. It is a great form of “viral marketing” online.
• You give permission to a person who wants to join your network.

Some other social media sites that may be really useful to you but you may not have used:
• Plaxo
• Meetup

When many clients first approach us, typesetting (the work of setting and arranging type on a page) is simply a quick step: drop the content using a pre-selected font, nothing more. In this article, we will outline how typography has the potential to play an integral role in the development of your product and brand.

Type can invoke an emotional response

As a design company, we are particularly aware of the fierce competition for attention from customers. Typography is one of the many ways you can draw in a customer by eliciting an emotional response. We look at all visual factors that contribute to the reaction: it’s not just the large type that creates the drama; it’s the size of the type in relation to the page. It’s not just the image, but also the juxtaposition of the wording and image that can create drama, excitement, reassurance, familiarity, or sense of innovation.

Typesetting can make information easier to understand

The designer breaks up the information in your content into more easily digestible parts. Even in this information-overload age of the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, etc. humans can still only process one message/idea at a time. If winning over customers is contingent upon them understanding a complex component of your business, how that information is presented to a potential customer may become more important than any emotional response.

Close-up of a cookbook; the designer uses different fonts to differentiate between ingredients lists, directions, and suggestions for recipe changes, making it easier for a multitasking reader to find information. Photo: Anatomy of a Dish, designed by Doyle Partners

When we create a typographic system for your product, we have several items in mind:

Legibility vs Readability
Many confuse the concept of readability with legibility. Legibility refers mostly to the letterforms: are they easily recognizable? Are they clearly printed (no smearing and not cut-off)? Readability is how easily the text read, and is mostly dictated by cultural norms. In our Western culture, we read top to bottom, left to right. This is why vertical type will always be significantly more difficult to read. Right-justified text may add visual interest to the page, too many lines of right-justified running text will be more difficult for the reader to find his/her place again when they reach the next line. Maintaining the customer’s attention is important. A frustrated reader needs little incentive to skip over text.

Illuminate the Content
The typographic system we create for you is largely dependent on the tone and information in the content. This is one of the reasons why content development is so critical to the evolution of your project and why it is necessary to have all of the content finalized before the actual design process begins. Once you start thinking of content as a synergetic component of the design process, you will find that the message of your campaign/product is clearer and more compelling, strengthening your brand.

Compare the book cover to a spread from the same book: the designer used color and referential type to grab the reader’s attention for the cover. In the spread, he adheres to classical rules of typesetting to maintain readability. Photo: Book cover and spread from Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy, designed by Abbott Miller at Pentagram Design

Less is more
Regardless of intention of the typesetting, a clear, simplified system where all of the levels of hierarchy are established, not more not less, is best. The complexity of the information as well as the purpose of the piece will dictate how that page (printed or digital) is designed. For example, in a brochure, a page with dense running text will likely be more cleanly and simply designed than say, for instance, the cover page. One’s purpose is to inform, the other’s purpose is to draw in the reader.

Like many other aspects of design, remember that the process is just as much reductive as it is additive. Simplify and clarify.

As with anything else in this universe, luckily for us, there is a science attached to it.  Yes, there is a method to figuring things out, and quite like in math, there is one clear answer for each problem. The trick is to understand and define the problem. Whether you are big, small, known, unknown, with a general or niche target market, one thing is for sure, it is good to know what you are getting into before you start.

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do” – well, the philosopher Epictetus certainly wasn’t referring to web identity here, but really the first step in web design, as well as content layout (which go hand in hand), is to identify what the purpose of your website is going to be. Is it going to be an informational site? Will it generate revenue through sales? Or does it exist to lend validity and professionalism to your company? 

Information rich sites generally tend to perform very well in search engine results. While the logic behind these ratings is complex, generally speaking a well structured site with just the right amount of keywords will provide good results. So in this case, more is more. But if the purpose of your site is merely to have an internet location where employees check their email and clients obtain your contact information, then there is no need to clutter up your website, keep it simple and to the point. Many companies don’t see that there is a real need for them to surface a winner in the hyper text race. Clear the track for the needier cyber marketers “you’ll”, and save yourselves the time and money. 

After having defined the broad purpose of your websistance, evaluating how your clients will arrive at your site should be next on your agenda. If you are a well established and popular company and you think people are instinctively going to add a www and a .com to your name, then your strategy will be very different from one whose existence is relatively unknown.  

A well known couture house for example may take on a minimalistic approach, heavily relying on their designs to project an image. Here the primary focus is not to draw people to the site but to serve as a showcase of their work, and perhaps provide a convenient place for their loyal clients to shop at. Contrary to this situation, lesser known companies who are at the mercy of the web critters (spiders, crawlers, bots all included) may have to focus a lot more on keyword rich content, smart layout, and possibly the help of a good search engine company providing fodder regularly, to attract favorable search results. 

Are you in with the in crowd? Your target audience will define how and how much content is laid out in your site. Take for example a space for kids. Too much content will definitely be a turn off. On the other hand a site selling big boy toys – electronic gadgets and games will contain plenty of information, cleverly laid out in several pages, and easily accessed through convenient links. 

If one were to sit down and digest all this information, one of the key points that becomes evident is that you are better off not shopping for a website solution with a wholesale, one–size-fits-all kind of approach. You have a better chance of receiving a good return on your investment if you were to spend some time tailoring your web-suit to your measurements.  So here is a little guide to help you decide what kind of fabric and style will be right for your custom made outfit.

• Height: Is it important to be rated highly on the searches. If so, how high would you like to go? (example:  top three links, first search page, first two pages, I don’t care)
• Width: What kind of audience would you like to attract? A wide spectrum of people or a narrow devoted group. (example: shoppers for home goods, shoppers for environment friendly home goods)
• Style: Who are you inviting to your pad? (example: teens, elderly, professionals, new moms?)
• Usage: How will you use it?  (example: users will simply have a good time, I will sell something, a book club, etc)
• Duration: For how long are they likely to stay? (example: busy professionals, leisure readers)