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Social media craftsmen…and tools
I’m admittedly late to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive party: this was my first year.
I heard a lot about it ahead of time. Some good, a lot of bad, a lot of “I hate it, but you have to go.” So I was curious about it, if for no other reason than as an opportunity to witness a sociological phenomenon: What is it like to attend a conference that big, with that much hype, with that many people (over 10,000!), all talking about the same things?
Well, it’s pretty clear: there are actually several conferences within SXSW..and not just film, music, and interactive. Even within interactive there are multiple conferences.
What’s also pretty clear: there are two types of social media users: those who use the tools as ends in and of themselves, and those who use the tools as a means to a (larger) end.
Among my friends and colleagues, I heard a lot of frustration. Frustration that the content wasn’t stronger, that there was nothing new, that people were stuck in an echo chamber. I can see that.
As it occurred to me at the time, and as I said to them, “social media” as a space seems relatively finite. There are the tools, and there’s how you can use them. In the beginning, there weren’t a lot of people moving around that space. But now there are lots. Thousands. (Millions?) And that’s made the space—at least as long as it’s constrained to the tools and how to use them—very, very tight indeed.
So the tension I heard, I think, is the desire to break out of that space, the desire for it all to be about something more. And for a number of folks it already is.
It’s not so much about moving away from social media. It’s about moving away from social media as an end in and of itself. It’s about a desire for social media to capitalize on the potential it represents. For social media to be about pursuing the horizon and what’s beyond it, not about standing still and watching it (regardless of how high-tech the tools).
So SXSW, at least the interactive part of it, and at least the social media part of that (since the developers seemed to have a totally different experience—something I hope to test next year by sending one of ours), is two conferences: one for tools, and one for those who want to build. The problem is, I don’t think even SXSW understands (or at least, understood), that they’re serving two masters. Without that distinction, you had tool-focused people wondering what all these loosey-goosey discussions were about, and you had the builders wondering why we’re still talking about Hammer 2.0.
There’s much more to say, I’m sure, about the “social media space” and where it’s going, but I’m curious to know what you think. Do you see the distinction between tools and craftsmen? Does it matter?
Categories: Digital Media
What carbs can teach us about branding (Part 2): Social media brand strategies
Back in December I posted an entry entitled, “What carbs can teach us about branding.” With the holiday feasts around the corner, I thought it would be good fun to walk through brand relationship strategies using snack isle brands as examples.
To briefly recap, businesses—for-profit and nonprofit alike—typically manage a family of products and programs, and the perceived relationships between those offerings and the “master” brand matters. That’s ultimately how credit and equity accrue in the right places.
With that in mind, snack isle mainstays Mars, Nabisco, Pepperidge Farms, and Entenmann’s provided a clear set of examples to help frame thinking around brand relationships, which exist on a continuum from product-focused to master brand-focused.
So what does this mean in the world of social media?
Social media provides marketers and brand stewards myriad new opportunities to engage those that matter most in meaningful, two-way dialogues. Some say the price you pay for this increased engagement is a loss of control. While you can’t control the conversations, you can work to control the brand context in which they take place.
Social media involves people just as much as programs and products. How you connect to and leverage the power of your people will play a huge role in your success online. And with brand diffusion a continuing threat, managing how your social media outposts are positioned verbally and visually is vital.
Master branding in social media
In master branding (exemplified last time by Entenmann’s), all the energy is put into building the master brand, and programs and products are afforded no unique identity. (As such, you can’t really master brand people!) For organizations looking to extend a single, high-level value proposition across a number of social media outposts, master branding makes a lot of sense.
The New York Times certainly thinks so, as they provide an easy case study in managing brand relationships on Twitter. The master brand profile is, obviously, @nytimes. And in exactly the same way Entenmann’s brands cake and strudel, the New York Times master brands key content offerings including @nytimesscience, @nytimeshealth, @nytimessports, @nytimestravel, and @nytimesstyle via a consistent, plain-speak naming convention and standardized background and profile image designs.
For a master-branded blogging example, look to Accenture. The Accenture Technology Labs Blog, the Accenture Blog for Internal IT, and Accenture’s Green IT Blog are, again, master branded in much the way as Entenmann’s cake and strudel. While Accenture has a number of blogs with a couple of different design approaches, all share a plain-speak naming convention and a master brand-focused design approach. Accenture takes a master branding approach with all its communications, and has clearly committed to it in the social media space as well.
In both examples, while connections are forged within discrete content areas, all the equity flows to the master brand. Depending on your goals, offerings, content strategies, resources, and the opportunities before you, master branding likely makes sense for some portion of your social media communications architecture.
Source branding in social media
Source branding is about promoting two brands at once, connecting on multiple levels, and encouraging cross selling. Of course social media is a place for much more than “brands,” it’s a place for people. And whereas master-branded social media content may indeed lean more towards the company line, source branding is a great way to bring people into the equation and create real dialogue while also building equity in the source (i.e. master) brand.
Looking again at the New York Times, its high-profile personalities on Twitter employ a simple name and bio convention that communicates both the source (New York Times) brand and the elevated personality brand. Thomas Friedman is a brand; his Twitter handle is @NYTimesFriedman, and his bio clearly states where he works. The background design is the same as the earlier examples, but Mr. Friedman’s picture is used in place of the Times’ logo. The same approach is used for other high-profile personalities like Maureen Dowd (@NYTimesDowd), Frank Rich (@NYTimesRich), and more. This type of tight source branding is reminiscent of the Pepperidge Farms examples shown last time.
Of course sometimes communications need a little more autonomy, and source branding can provide much needed flexibility. In the blogging world, successful blogs like General Motors’ Fastlane and Southwest Airlines’ Nuts About Southwest show how a little distance between a blog and its source brand can provide for a more engaging experience. While still clearly connected visually to GM and Southwest, a looser, more casual approach provides breathing room that enables engagement around content well beyond corporate press releases.
Do you have products, programs, personalities, and / or content that has (or could have) equity in and of itself? Are there resources in place to keep it all healthy? If so, source branding in social media is a great way to let aspects of your business flourish—meeting audiences where they are and all the while steering ample credit to the master brand.
Endorsed / product branding in social media
For instances where near-complete autonomy is appropriate, endorsed and/or product branding provides a means for very thin connections to the master brand. Think of the “endorsing” Nabisco triangle on a box of Oreas from last time, or the nearly invisible Mars presence on a Snickers wrapper (or its Twitter feed for that matter!).
While a great market share / penetration strategy in the physical world, smaller organizations should be careful about endorsed / product branding in social media: unless audiences read the fine print, they might not realize who is actually behind the online experience they’re enjoying. That’s just fine for Mars, Proctor & Gamble, and the like, but most of us simply don’t have the resources to support an array of discrete product brands.
That said, if you have a need to maintain a social media outpost that strays significantly from your corporate / institutional voice, or want to subtly market or educate on particular themes, endorsed and product branding make a lot of sense. For instance, Quicken’s What’s the Diff? blog—in name, look, and tone—bears little to no resemblance to master-branded Quicken communications save for the “endorsing” Quicken logo in the upper right. Quicken is using an endorsed branding strategy to engage people in a casual, seemingly non-sales, environment. Of course the Quicken homepage is an easy click away.
Similarly, Adobe maintains a large index of both corporate blogs and largely autonomous employee blogs. By allowing employees to blog in their own voice—and at arm’s length from the master brand—Adobe has developed a corps of enthusiastic ambassadors for its products. And while many of the blogs have a unique look and feel that has little to do with Adobe brand, the sites all link back to Adobe and include at least a mention of the Adobe brand, if not the logo.
Sure, it might take some intestinal fortitude to engage in thinly branded social media communications, and while it might not make sense for core products and services, it could be the perfect strategy for “blinded” promotion. It’s also a great way to endorse your people, and for them to endorse you—leveraging the power of personality on your brand’s behalf. Just be sure to have appropriate guidelines in place ahead of time.
Matter where it matters to be, and get the right credit
Social media is about providing opportunities for connections that matter, thus it’s not a place to try and be all things to all people, all at once. People expect to be able to home in on what they want to connect with, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of your master brand.
By crafting a social media architecture—one that considers content, desired outcomes, and the appropriate mix of brand relationships—organizations and businesses of all stripes can create opportunities for dialogue that resonate and build brand.
Categories: Branding, Design, Digital Media, Strategy and Management
When the social media skeptic
becomes a social(media)ite
Now this is a story all about how my social life got flipped, turned upside down.*
I don’t even know where or how it began, but over the past year social media outlets have profoundly impacted my days and nights. I have all the characteristics of a human being*, but now these digitally pixelated outlets have fused their ways into how I think and even act at times.
Sounds kind of Matrix-like, right? Well, unfortunately, no one can be told what social media is. You have to see it for yourself.*
At Berklee College of Music (the only college I can think of where business cards were more important than textbooks), a daily pill was shoved down our throats about how to be successful in the music industry. It came down to one simple word. Networking. If we only knew what was to come in the next few years….
Enter: Twitter and Co.
It’s almost sad to admit how much this tool has helped change my social and professional life. I don’t have the same impact as Conan O’Brien, but I’ve spent enough time using Twitter to get it. Most people sign up for an account and then scratch their heads saying, “What now??”
Well, imagine the ability to get in contact with some of the most famous and successful people in the world (or just in your world) with the simple click of a “follow” button. Sounds ridiculous, right? It’s not. I have been in contact with musicians I adore, CEOs of companies I rave about, developers of software applications that I use on a daily basis. The steps necessary to do this before would have been outrageous!
Twitter has also allowed me to meet people I might have passed by on the street, train, or in a bar or restaurant somewhere, but would have never approached. Now some of them are great friends who have shown (and continue to show) me new things about music, my city, and life in general.
It’s almost as if people walk around the streets shouting out snippets of thoughts, suggestions of material to read, music to listen to, etc. That’s what is great about Twitter. And the even better part is that I get to choose which crazy, street-roaming psychopaths I want to listen to. They are providing content catered to/for me because they have similar, like minds and I can tell this because of the (pleasant Beatles-esque) noise they produce.
***Thanks to the Fresh Prince, Patrick Bateman, and Morpheus for the quotes.
See you on Twitter? Maybe we’ll grab a drink 
twitter.com/dirkler
Categories: Digital Media, Outside the Square
In praise of large type
There seems to be a recent trend of digital typography getting bigger. For many of us, this is a pleasant evolution. Squinting to read 11-point body copy on eight-page articles with 10-point sidebar captions turns too quickly into a great recipe for blood shot eyes and a headache.
But if reading this tiny type is so difficult, why was it used in the first place?
Until the past year, the number of us working on low resolution monitors offset the number of us on higher resolution displays. Of course this is no new trend. Technology gets better, as such it gets cheaper, and soon we’re all working on 20-inch monitors that cost only a few hundred dollars.
A few years ago the implications of small displays (small web browsers) forced designers and developers to work within a standard site width of 800 pixels. And not even a few years before that the standard was 640 pixels.
Yet all of our considerations were the same then as they are now. Keep as much “above the fold” as possible, make sure the vertical length of the page doesn’t go on for decades, and try not to push content too far away from navigation. This often led to 11-point body copy—less than desirable, but necessary. Fit your country estate in your new york apartment, or better yet, into your 20-foot sail boat.
When you have 1000 pixels to work with, like we now do , options grow quickly. Three-, four- or even five-column sites with 12-point body copy are no longer impossible. Sites like nytimes.com and designobserver.com are able to push seven to 10 interest items above the fold, including photography and sponsor ads.
Some sites are even increasing body copy to 13- 15-point type with lovely open leading (line spacing). Here you can see the folks at Contrast making great use of large body copy and spacey leading for both their main column and sidebar. Good.is redesigned their site a few months ago and happily stuck to their large, body-copy filled two columns—and for the most part (on a site that requires lots of reading) just about all their copy is over 12pts.
This may not qualify as front page (or homepage material), but in the world of the web, as we all read more and more and more on our screens, bigger type means more accessibility and ease of use. Even subconsciously, that larger type size may mean fewer stops to the newsstand and a second look at that tablet.
Categories: Design, Digital Media
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