The Tendo View

5 tips for working with visual designers

Selena Welz — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:27:03 +0000

For many people, the most fun part of creating a website or publication is the visual design aspect. I know it is for me. It’s what I call “fun” creativity (as opposed to “not so fun” creativity, such as trying to transform a product data sheet into an interesting and engaging article for readers).

And yet because visual design brings together people who are visual thinkers and people who are, well, not visual thinkers, projects can often go awry.

Understanding and embracing the creative process, and keeping the channels of communication open, are the best ways to ensure a design that will meet your goals.

In that vein, here are a few tips I’ve picked up from working on creative projects.

Tips for working with visual designers:

If you’re not sure, ask. Visual designers don’t expect everyone to know their jargon any more than a rocket scientist does. So don’t worry about anyone thinking you’re ignorant if you need to ask what sans serif means. Designers are always happy to explain terms. If they aren’t, find a new designer.
Use examples to illustrate what you mean. My interpretation of “modern” or “fresh” might be different than yours. It’s always helpful for designers if you can point out examples of what you mean by certain descriptions.
Define how you’re using visual design terms. Or, ask your colleagues to do so. Many terms are misused, so you might think you’re communicating clearly when you really aren’t. (For example, I’ve seen the term wireframe used to represent everything from a content outline to a fully functioning HTML page mock-up.)
Start with a creative brief. Sorry folks, but “I’ll know it when I see it” just doesn’t cut it. No one expects you to design your project yourself, but you are expected to be able to clearly articulate the goals, audience, key qualities, and/or characteristics of your project for your designer. Otherwise, you’re just wasting time and money.
Be patient. Except in rare circumstances, no designer will produce exactly what you want the first time. And maybe not the second. This back-and-forth process is perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of design (and writing!). More often than not, your ideal design is reached through feedback, discussion, and collaboration that happens during the design process.

By keeping these tips in mind, you can avoid some of the potential pitfalls in the visual design process, and instead focus on the fun stuff. Enjoy!

Have some tips of your own to share, or disagree with any of mine? Leave a comment to tell me about it.

Video: A marketing necessity?

Siobhan Nash — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:39:34 +0000

Use of video among marketers is on the rise as more businesses realize its value in increasing brand awareness and driving sales. Video is also proving an effective way to facilitate conversations that help to win new customers and solidify the relationship with existing ones. And as devices such as smartphones and tablets (like Apple’s iPad) expand the platforms for viewing videos, consumers have an ever-increasing number of ways to view your content. That transforms video from a luxury to a marketing necessity.

Here are some interesting statistics related to the use of video in business:

• The number of people who view online video content monthly will increase to 147.5 million in 2010, up from 135.1 million in 2009 (eMarketer)
• 63 percent of U.S. Internet users watch online videos (Dynamic Logic)
• The use of video blogging among Fortune 500 companies with public-facing blogs rose 10 percent from 2008 to 2009 (Society for New Communications Research)
• Of rich-media features, video ranked highest at 46 percent with multichannel retailers (Multichannel Merchant)
• Among various online video types, more companies created branded video content in the last 12 months (TurnHere)
• This year, the number of mobile video viewers will grow nearly 30 percent (eMarketer)

Is video on your list of marketing priorities? Let us know!

Editor’s note: The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) is currently conducting a research study on the use of video storytelling in business. Share your experiences with video by participating in the survey.

The conundrum of connectedness

Bill Golden — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:50:41 +0000

“This book is about a yearning and a need. It’s about finding a quiet, spacious place where the mind can wander free.” Does this quote strike a chord? Does it conjure an expansive horizon over a shimmering blue ocean and warm sand under your feet, your BlackBerry or iPhone left behind?

If it does, you’re probably ready for that vacation. It’s that time of year, after all.

The quote is from the introduction to Hamlet’s BlackBerry, Bill Powers’ new book about the frenzied world of ubiquitous “screens” and constant connection that we now inhabit. I haven’t read it yet, but from the reviews and author interviews I’ve read, it seems like a perfect vacation read.

I heard about Hamlet’s BlackBerry during an NPR interview with Powers a couple weeks ago. Having just gone without a mobile phone for two weeks, I had noticed an odd sense of relief. Without a connected device in my pocket, I felt free. There was nothing to check, no nagging curiosity to satiate, no distraction lingering in my thoughts. It was great. It was a bit like the “spacious place” Powers alludes to.

Powers’ book describes my experience almost exactly. He explores the “conundrum of connectedness” and how it has changed our work and personal lives, for better and worse. Powers is no Luddite and he’s not advocating that we ditch our smartphones. He admires and sees the value connectedness brings to society. But he’s aware of its downside, too.

From what I’ve read, Powers’ book is part discourse on our need to connect and communicate and part practical guide for today’s hyper-connected world. Whiling admitting to loving the technology himself, Powers suggests we embrace it with caution. “What I’m proposing here is a new digital philosophy, a way of thinking that takes into account the human need to connect outward, to answer the call of the crowd, as well as the opposite need for time and space apart. The key is to strike a balance between the two impulses,” says Powers.

Looking at our current reality and the countless screens that fill our daily lives, Powers writes, “But as we connect more and more, they’re changing the nature of everyday life, making it more frantic and rushed. And we’re losing something of great value, a way of thinking and moving through time that can be summed up in a single word: depth. Depth of thought and feeling, depth in our relationships, our work and everything we do.”

Vacation is always a prime opportunity to get away from the day to day and gain new perspective on work, life, and self. As a communications professional, you know better than anyone about the degree to which we’re now connected. If you need a book for vacation and have questioned the implications that connectedness has on your job, how you reach customers, and manage your personal life, check out Hamlet’s BlackBerry. I plan to.

Don’t use that tone with me!

Christine Zender — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 05:00:36 +0000

A big part of my job is to consult on, create, evaluate, and distribute content. As such, I spend a lot of time writing about content. Some days, however, it seems as though a disproportionate amount of that time is spent trying to communicate what I think/recommend/need in a clear, emotionally neutral way to coworkers, clients, vendors—and yes, even my family—via email.

My default setting is “direct” (those who know me would probably say “blunt”), so in order to ensure my email does not unintentionally offend, I often put them through a “bitch-check.” But starting today, that’s going to change.

Julie Jares just sent me a link to a product called ToneCheck. Developed by Lymbix, ToneCheck is an email plugin that “ensures your tone is clearly communicated and understood before you hit the Send button.”

Genius.

ToneCheck evaluates the language in your emails, assigning “questionable” phrases one of eight Emotional Ratings that range from affection/friendliness to humiliation/shame. Users can edit their settings to accommodate their tolerances for negative or positive language so your emails will still sound like you—just less offensive.

Check it out.

Cisco communities: secrets for success

Siobhan Nash — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 01:09:59 +0000

With approximately 500,000 registered customers across its four primary communities—Cisco Developer Network, The Cisco Learning Network, Cisco Support Community, and My Cisco—and community efforts on all major social media channels, Cisco knows a thing or two about sustaining successful B2B communities. And that includes one key tenet: When it comes to starting a B2B community, many companies believe that if you build it, your customers will come. Not necessarily true.

Tendo recently spoke to Jeanette Gibson, director of social media marketing at Cisco, about how to build, grow, and maintain communities. But before we begin, a quick disclaimer: Cisco is a Tendo client.

What are some of the most important considerations when starting a B2B community?
You need to know that you’re committed for the long haul. If you’re thinking about creating a community, you should understand that it’s a long-term relationship. Think about how you’re going to sustain it over time versus just putting up a community for an event or a launch.

You can’t just open a community and expect it to be self-sustaining right away, and that’s probably the biggest lesson to learn for every company. You also need to understand the audience you’re serving and why it’s going to your community. If it’s for support, don’t clog it up with a lot of marketing messaging.

How did Cisco determine the audiences it was trying to attract?
A lot of the audience growth in our communities happens organically. For example, people will self-select into the learning community because they have a specific goal around achieving certification for Cisco. And customers are going to Cisco both on Facebook and via our own Web community to get help in achieving their goal.

In addition to giving customers communities in which they can help each other, we’re trying to get more people to join the Collaboration or Virtualization communities to help influence their peers in the sales process. At the end of the day, we know that B2B purchase decisions are made by peer influence.

In general, we want to make it easy so customers can go to whatever community meets their need at any given time—whether it’s on Twitter or Facebook or Cisco.com.

What tactics do you use to grow your community?
We have different ways to bring them into the community. On Facebook, Twitter, and our blogs, we spread the word that we want to have a two-way conversation. For example, with a data center launch, we use the blog and the community to post videos and opinions, so we can talk to people whether they’re in the research phase of the purchase process or they’re ready to make the purchase.

We’re trying to add more social capabilities as well as incentive programs to communities. Our MVP programs, for example, identify “top talkers” and give rewards to customers who help each other. In addition, we’re creating more ideation capabilities with communities so customers can give us feedback on what they’re hearing, what trends they see, and what we should be thinking about.

Does Cisco have dedicated managers for its communities?
With the Developer and Support communities, there were dedicated managers from the start. But as we built new communities that focused more on thought leadership, we had to provide training so that employees recognize that communities are an organizational responsibility.

Monitoring a community can’t just be someone’s night job or weekend job. If you’re building a community, you have to have a community manager. We’re helping managers understand that it’s about nurturing the community over the long term and that they shouldn’t get into it unless they’re prepared to assign staff and resources and nurture the community properly.

In addition, we have a social media advisory council to address broader issues around creating award programs for customers and long-term sustained engagement, and to help us connect the dots because we’re such a big company.

How do you evaluate and/or measure the success of your community effort?
We look at both quantitative and qualitative measures. We’ll look at the number of customers who had a question and whether it was resolved to determine if coming into the community lead to a successful result.

We’re also looking more and more at engagement. We want to make sure customers are helping each other and that we’re reducing the number of support issues that arise. There are huge opportunities to get customer feedback. If customers are in the support community, for example, and they have product feedback, you need to make sure there’s routing internally so that product managers and engineers get that information.

What is the most important piece of advice you would give fellow marketers about launching a B2B community?
Listen to your customers and make sure you’re meeting their needs. Remember that you’re creating a community for them—not you. It’s not for you to market to; it’s a forum that facilitates two-way conversation so that you can serve customers in a new way.

It’s so important to make sure you’re transparent and authentic, and that you’re creating the community for the right reasons: to help customers get more information about your company and connect with your peers. It’s not a marketing vehicle; it’s an opportunity to help the customer.

Navigating highways and Web pages

Charlotte Ziems — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 23:20:34 +0000

My recent trip to New England reminded me of one of the things I love about the East Coast: People know how to drive. By that I mean they know that if they’re driving more slowly on a highway than others around them, they move to the right lanes to let faster drivers pass on the left. There’s a good reason for that. When you pass a car on its left side, the driver can see you the entire time. If you pass on the right, you risk falling into the driver’s blind spot where he or she can’t see you. You always want to make sure other drivers can *see* where you are, so passing on the left makes good sense, as does moving right to let passers pass. With all due respect to my West Coast friends, most California drivers don’t subscribe to this.

So how have East Coast drivers learned the navigational habit of moving right to let faster drivers pass on the left? Is it a cultural phenomenon? Or is it the signs along the highways saying, “Slower drivers move to right lanes?” Is that all it takes? Have you ever really noticed all of the signs on highways? There are tons of them. Some tell truckers to avoid the left lanes. Others tell you how fast you should go. Still more indicate where exits will lead and how many miles you’ve gone. Directional signs tell you whether the exit road goes north or south, east or west. Or toward what town.

As I drove from Boston to New Hampshire to Maine and back again, I started thinking of highways as a big Web page, and exits as calls to action (yeah, call me a Web content geek). The highway signs were equivalent to Web navigational aids—telling me where I was along my journey, how cautious I should be (e.g.,”road work next 6 miles”), where I could go from a certain point, how far my destination was, etc. And I wondered, if we create Web pages with navigational aids like highway signs, how much more effective would they be? What can Web content strategists learn from the navigational aids that have been supporting the world’s highway systems for decades? Should we adopt standard symbols (think Stop signs or Railroad Crossing icons) so that Web audiences learn a common visual language for navigating a content journey?

What do you think? How do you help your audience navigate the Web journey you offer them?

Sports and beauty on Facebook

Julie Jares — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:06:30 +0000

Sports rivalries get people talking. At the beginning of the World Cup, the Nike Shoes Facebook page posted a question asking users to vote on who they thought would win. To date, 2,722 users have voted—and they’re still weighing in. The Nike Basketball page got the competitive juices flowing for Lakers and Celtics fans with a question about whether or not a game 7 was going to be necessary.

But using competition to generate enthusiasm and interaction isn’t limited to Nike, a company with an obvious and direct link to the sporting world. Benefit Cosmetics, a San Francisco-based makeup company, has a sassy Facebook page that’s also taking advantage of users’ love of competition to encourage comments on its page.

Right now, for example, you can vote for your favorite Benefit product in the Beauty World Cup, a clever way to tap into the World Cup hype and also get some feedback from users on their favorite Benefit products. Benetint beat the Eye Bright pencil in last week’s match-up and will move on to compete against the winner of the Hoola bronzing powder vs. High Beam match-up.

The page also includes links to Benefit’s blog content—sometimes they’ll recommend a past blog post to answer a user question, or sometimes they just want to promote an event, product, or other information. There are videos, too, and currently there’s a contest going to share travel photos inspired by Benefit (i.e., “Bad Gal in Vegas,” which is a play on the company’s Bad Gal mascara); the contest could use more submissions, but it’s clearly an effort to address its global audience and to consider the brand’s global reach.

Many corporate Facebook pages suffer from a lack of personality and a lack of active involvement, but not so for Benefit and Nike. Kudos.

Integrating social media content

Charlotte Ziems — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:12:24 +0000

Tendo has lots of clients (both B2B and B2C) who are in various stages of adopting social media strategies. Some are wrestling with ratings and reviews. Others are trying to encourage internal bloggers and Twitter users to be more active and engaged in the blogosphere. Still others are in the listening stage, using social media monitoring tools to collect data about online conversations and struggling to convert that data into actionable analysis.

A common misstep I see is the tendency to rush toward social media without a clear idea of why. Facebook pages, proprietary communities, and Twitter accounts pop up all over without a clear strategy behind them. This doesn’t bother me as much as another habit I’ve noticed—because, after all, social media is relatively new (in the grand scheme of things) and companies will figure out their strategies soon enough, especially after diving in.

The other habit, though, is a bigger concern. Some companies rush toward social media with the assumption that that’s all there is—that social media should replace other communications channels and, for instance, that Web content is so “yesterday.”

I couldn’t disagree more. Rather than trade social media for other channels, I believe companies need to integrate social media elements with existing channels in ways that benefit both. Integrate community discussions into your Web content (and link from one to the other); bring your case study company representatives in as guest bloggers; include a real-time hash-tagged Twitter stream on your events landing page.

This blog post from SandersSays captures my point perfectly:

“When I asked him what his social media strategy was, his answer surprised me:

“You don’t need a social media strategy—you need a brand strategy that leverages social media. Don’t get off the brand strategy just because there’s a new communications channel; that’s how you lose the plot as a brand. Technology is the tail, not the dog.”

Wow. He’s spot on. I saw this back in ‘97 when companies had to quickly create an “Internet strategy,” often wasting tons of money on agencies, consultants, and painful meetings. What they eventually realized was that they needed to integrate this new communications channel in their brand promise/fulfillment approach to their customers. Those that did succeeded wildly in the coming years.”

How are you integrating your Facebook pages with your Web content? Or landing pages with Twitter streams?

B2B social media: Is it marketing or what?

Selena Welz — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 22:10:23 +0000

B2B social media seems to be on everyone’s minds these days. EMarketer.com reports that B2B marketing activity on social networks is estimated to increase 43.3 percent in 2010, while spending is estimated to increase by $54 million in 2014 (up from $11 million in 2009)[1].

Despite these robust estimates, B2B marketers have lagged behind B2C marketers in adopting social media. And it’s no wonder. Because B2B social media is still relatively new, few concrete examples of success exist, making ROI difficult to prove. Standards and best practices are still being developed, mostly through trial and error.

So why should B2B companies bother? In my recent social media-focused client work, I’ve been facing this very question. “We need to focus on short-term revenue,” they tell me. “How do we know this social media stuff is worthwhile?”

With no metrics to point out, this question is difficult to answer. How do you justify building a Facebook fan page, for example, when traditional marketing practices can be backed up with numbers and a history of proven efficacy?

Well, for starters, social media—even for B2B companies—isn’t marketing. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Applying traditional marketing practices in a social media context just doesn’t work. Imagine a friend posting a link to a press release announcing a new diet pill on your wall. There’s a reason the Can-Spam Act was passed. People don’t like marketing infiltrating their personal space.

The human element of social media is exactly what makes it difficult to translate into a B2B context. Until recently, social media has largely been a consumer realm, where people interact based on personal interests, personal entertainment, or to accomplish tasks. No wonder a lot of B2B marketers don’t take social media very seriously.

But this is a limited way to look at the potential of social media. Whatever people are doing on social networks, the underlying principles are the same: communication, interaction, and building relationships. Every company, no matter what it’s selling, depends on this same set of principles. It’s all about reaching your customers effectively and building relationships with them.

So when considering social media in the B2B context, keep this in mind: Behind every impersonal business decision is a living, breathing human being. And most business decisions, no matter how big and how important, originate from a network of personal relationships.

If you look at it this way, B2B companies have some characteristics that make them great candidates for using social media:

B2B companies typically have a more complicated value proposition than, say, the satisfaction of an ice cream cone on a hot summer day. Communicating intangible business value and thought leadership requires a wider platform than traditional marketing can provide. Social media opens the door to more types of communication. Furthermore, you can communicate at a deeper level using social media platforms than you can with traditional marketing.
B2B companies often have a long sales cycle. High stakes purchases require a lot of support and information. This support and information is traditionally provided by sales people working one-on-one with customers during the pre-sales/consideration phase. Why not use social media as one strategy for providing that?

Some B2B companies are taking the leap into social media. Cisco has a Facebook page with more than 60,500 friends linked to it. Marketing traditionalists might question the value of this page, but one glance at Cisco’s Facebook wall clearly shows that the audience is actively engaged in the form of comments and “likes.” Oracle, Dell, and Deloitte all have Facebook pages that show similar levels of interaction.

Even if we can’t clearly articulate the monetary value of B2B social media, it’s clear to me that it is a useful promotion tool, especially when combined with traditional marketing practices. Reaching your audience is reaching your audience, regardless of how you do it.

For some interesting insight on this topic, check out this useful blog I found, Social Media B2B.

But before you go, tell me what you think of B2B social media. Is it just marketing in disguise or is it an authentic way to reach your audience? What successful B2B social media strategies have you seen?

[1] The EMarketer report includes data from external sources. Outsell provided the 43.3 percent figure while Forrester provided the spending estimates.

Video veritas: Who’s watching?

Siobhan Nash — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:38:52 +0000

If you were asked who watches more video on their mobile devices, you’d probably say teens. I know that would have been my answer. Surprisingly, that’s not the case. According to the latest Three Screen report from Nielsen, 55 percent of mobile video viewers are adults aged 25-49. And on average, these users are spending from 2 hours 53 minutes to 3 hours 15 minutes a month viewing videos on their mobile devices.

Also according to the Nielsen report, the total mobile viewing audience “grew 51.2 percent year-over-year, surpassing 20 million users for the first time.”

This trend is supported by an eMarketer survey showing mobile content and Internet usage of U.S. mobile phone users. Although video streaming falls close to the bottom of the list in this survey in terms of content usage, it’s estimated to more than double this year from 2007, from 11 percent to 25 percent. And in 2011, that number will grow to 33 percent.

These statistics aren’t too surprising given the proliferation of smartphones and the introduction of other Internet-enabled mobile devices, such as Apple’s iPad. These devices present a great opportunity for reaching your audience in an engaging medium—video. With so many eyeballs on the small screen, the question is does video factor into your current or future marketing plans? If not, why not?