Forget Numbers: 5 Enlightened Ways to Measure Your Brand

Yes, branding is intricate, to say the very least. It’s practical and ethereal, inexplicably tangible, and intangible alike. And so, let’s take a fresh look at how to be brand leaders, managers, and doers.

Let’s set aside our marketing funnels and budgeting spreadsheets for just a minute, and instead think of how we might approach our jobs differently if we were pursuing not year-over-year growth, but brand enlightenment.

1. Keep first things first.
2. Mind the shop.
3. Be authentic.
4. Stay open.
5. Everything matters.

Read more at: http://www.inc.com/curt-hanke/zen-and-the-art-of-branding.html

The Year of Fearlessness

Our lives are messy, and how we form our perceptions of brands is also messy. The sheer number of available options for brands—digital, social, content and search, along with all the more traditional brand channels—can be daunting.

As marketers, we can respond to the messiness and complexity by getting defensive and picking a few safe-and-simple marketing channels and talking points. Or we can go the other way and develop the depth of character, tensity and quick pace that will keep people interested.
Read more at: http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/the-year-of-fearlessness-brand-insights-from-sandy-thompson.html

Successful Brands Satisfy Basic Desires

Brian Martin's article in Ad Age is a primer on what make successful brands.  "The most-successful brands don't focus on what we need; they focus on what we want." So according to Brian, what do people want, exactly?

1. To feel safe and secure.
2. To feel comfortable.
3. To be cared for and connected to others. (think social networking
4. To be desired by others.
5. To be free to do what we want.
6. To grow and become more.
7. To serve others and give back.
8. To be surprised and excited.
9. To believe there is a higher purpose.
10. To feel that they matter.

Read more about it in today's article "Remember to Give Them What They Want (It's Really Very Simple):
Successful Brands Do a Good Job of Satisfying People's 10 Basic Desires" by Brian Martin

Click on the image to enlarge it. The image illustrates Maslow's hierarchy of needs which provides an understanding of what motivates consumers to  interact with a brand. Hmmm... similar.

SEO Tip - No Registration Marks ® in Page Titles

Should trademark registration marks ® be used in page titles? Short answer is "No." They are not necessary and can present issues.

Special characters are not always supported in browser window title bars and they can appear poorly in search engine results.

The last example above from the Lowes site can be blamed on a poor content management system that allowed the error through. Below is an example of another page on the same site where the registration mark is displayed correctly in the search results.

The point is why risk hurting your search engine click throughs with a poorly displayed result when it isn't necessary?

Registration marks are not legally required in page titles. For example none of the major companies place registration marks in title tags on their sites. See trademark guidelines at Microsoft and IBM. 

A general best practice for offline communications is that registration marks should appear in the first or most prominent usage of the mark. Typically a Web site will cover all the trademarks in a legal statement on the site.  Again, see Microsoft and IBM for examples of best practices. 

While we're talking about marks, be sure that you understand the differences between ®, ™ and ℠. This should be detailed in your Web Site Style Guidelines and/or Brand Guidelines:

The registered trademark symbol, designated by ® (a circled R) is a symbol used to provide notice that the preceding mark is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. Trademarks not so registered are instead marked with the trademark symbol ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark in superscript style.

Fortune 100 Brands Are Infrequent Twitter Users

In August/September, Weber Shandwick, a digital communications company conducted a study of the Twitter habits of Fortune 100 companies. Here are some findings:

The study showed that 73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts. However, about three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts did not post tweets very often, and more than half (52 percent) were not actively engaged. (This was measured by engagement metrics such as numbers of links, hashtags, references and retweets.)

In addition, 50 percent of the Fortune 100 accounts had fewer than 500 followers, a small number in relation to the size and reach of a major corporation. Another 15 percent were inactive; of those, 11 percent were merely placeholder accounts — unused accounts to protect corporate names against so-called brand-jacking on Twitter — and 4 percent were abandoned after being used for a specific event.

My suggestion for future research; how many people follow branded Twitter accounts verses the Twitter accounts of individuals who work for Fortune 100 companies?  Twitter seems to be a usefull media for following people. The trick is to get "people" to talk about your brand in a favoriable light. 

By the way, did you know that 87.3% of social media statistics are made up. Including this one.

See the related stories:
Is Twitter Destined To Go The Way Of Other Internet Fads?
How Brands Should Use Twitter
Brands Struggle With Social Media At Work
Brands Seek Fans on Facebook

Brands Seek Fans on Facebook

If you throw enough money at any communications effort you can reach a lot of prospects. But like everything else in social media, measuring ROI remains uncertain at best. What is the value of a brand fan?

Here's some interesting facts from a recent article in Adweek.

Facebook does not keep statistics on the number of brands that have created pages on its platform. But most of the top brands have some sort of presence, and Facebook boasts that it has run campaigns from 83 of the top 100 brands.

Facebook's audience has proven mostly receptive to the invasion. Of the 15 most popular pages on the site, three belong to corporations: Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Skittles.

There's no media cost to setting up on Facebook, but brands often find the quickest way to build a sizable following is through -- you guessed it -- paid advertising.

Brands Struggle With Social Media At Work

Big brands continue to struggle to be an influential part of the social media scene in the office, according to a new study by Cleveland, Ohio-based WorkPlace Media.

The study, which polled office Internet users, found that 55% maintained at least one social media account, but of those respondents, just 43% access access their social media account at work and 78% of these workers spend less than 30 minutes a day at work on these sites.

Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand

This is a fascinating article on Mashable.com by Dan Schawbel the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog.

In the past few years personal branding has been discussed exhaustively throughout the Net. The difference between today and over ten years ago when it was first mentioned by Tom Peters, is the rise of social technologies that have made branding not only more personal, but within reach.

From the corporate brand (BMW), to the product brand (BMW M3 Coupe) and down to the personal brand (car salesman), branding is a critical component to a customer’s purchasing decision. These days, customer complaints and opinions are online and viewable through a simple search, on either Google or through social networks. There is no hiding anymore and transparency and authenticity are the only means to survive and thrive in this new digital kingdom.

Read the rest of the story at Mashable.com.

Companies Fail to Use Voice of the Customer for Competitive Gain

Despite overwhelming agreement on the importance of customer experience and word-of-mouth, senior marketers admit their companies are failing to take decisive, company-wide action to integrate customer voice and experience into key business and marketing processes, according to a new study by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

The CMO Council study underscores critical deficiencies in the way companies measure, optimize and leverage customer experience to drive loyalty, improve brand value and increase business performance and growth, including:

• Availability and aggregation of real-time customer experience data across touch points that should be shared across the organization
• Use of customer interactions to collect insights and intelligence or maximize up-sell and advocacy opportunities
• Lack of Internet processes and systems to track online word of mouth and drive customer advocacy

How Smart Web Design Can Strengthen Your Brand

In recent research, User Interface Engineering has been measuring brand engagement -- looking at a person's feelings of loyalty, confidence, integrity, pride, and passion, as it relates to

a specific brand.

They've discovered ways to tell how these feelings change when using a Web site, service, or product. They have learned that large logos and consistent color schemes have little effect on how engaged a customer is with your brand. Instead, the best way to dramatically strengthen brand engagement is by delivering a solid and delightful experience to the customer.

Read about their online seminar on branding research.