A picture is worth a thousand words right? Then why do we depend so much on writing word after word, sentence after sentence and hope that words alone will communicate the message we want to deliver? In many cases we rely on our words to stand on their own and forget the power of images to reinforce our message or an experience.

Over the last year we have seen a number of emerging trends and social applications that have proven just how engaging, fun and effective images can be to audiences. In fact, in many ways this is leaving marketers scrambling to figure out how they might take advantage of the popularity of services like Pinterest and Instagram to increase brand affinity and attract inbound traffic. The biggest barrier? How to communicate and engage with customers almost entirely visually? Let me attempt to provide some ideas that might help you solve your image problem.

Making Data Easier to Consume with Infographics

Infographics have become one of the hottest trends on the web over the last year or so. If you are a marketer then you have likely been bombarded with enough infographics to circle the globe 1,000 times, just in the last week. I don’t see that trend slowing down anytime soon. At Secret Sushi Creative we have designed a few for clients recently and have seen the demand increase. If there is information that needs to be conveyed quickly and in an engaging way, infographics are a great way to go. Just think of that last bullet-point-riddled Power Point presentation you had to sit through. Would you have paid attention and absorbed more of the information had it been in the form of an infographic?

Pros:

• If done thoughtfully infographics make complex data easier to absorb and understand. Especially when attention spans are short.
• A well designed infographic can also set a tone making the data more fun, serious, spooky (Halloween anybody?), etc.
• Infographics can be visually branded. Logos, colors, typography and more can stay on-brand.
• Infographics can be easily shared via any social media channel in the same way any other image can be. Facebook, Pinterest, your blog, Twitter, etc are all great places to share your infographic.

Cons:

• Designing infographics can sometimes be costly if you don’t have a design resource in-house.
• The turn around time for a decent infographic is at least a couple days due to the data collection, design time and approvals needed to produce one.

Tips: 

• Although you may miss out on the complete flexibility of creating your own infographic from the ground up, try your hand at service like Piktochart. It offers a a set of themes, common infographic elements and a WYSIWYG editor enabling non-designers to create your own infographics on the cheap.
• When posting your infographic to your blog I recommend appending “(Infographic)” or something similar to the end of the title. Since the title of your post is usually the only things that people see when it is shared via Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn,  Twitter and just about anywhere else… this will let those rabid infographics fans know that you have something that might interest them.
• Although many infographics are large and take a while to scroll through, consider making smaller, bit-sized ones from time to time. They take less time to produce and are more easily shared on sites that scale down image previews that are shared.
• Infographics are not about slapping pie charts and bar graphs on a pretty background. The best infographics usually tie in interesting data with a thoughtful design that helps reinforce the theme of the data. There are a ton of examples here in this group Pinterest board.

Sharing the Experience with Photos

Brands have been doing this on Facebook for some time now. Take a look at one of the great photos Red Bull has posted on their Facebook timeline (below). The new kid on the block is the social sharing service Instagram. With 27 million users and growing, Instagram is a growing community of people who fire up the app with the expectation of seeing some great user-generated photos.

Red Bull has carried their use of great photos on over to Instagram and amassed a large engaged community. Most of the images that they share is obviously shot by professional photographers versus an iPhone, but their followers are eating it up nonetheless. Local custom bag maker Rickshaw Bagworks has been using Facebook to share inside peeks into their company, some of the more interesting custom bags their customers have ordered and the culture of San Francisco where they are located. They recently started carrying that activity over into Instagram as well.

Red Bull on Facebook

Pros:

• The Instagram user-base is continuing to rapidly grow. Initially only released only on the iPhone, the app will be released to Android users any time now opening the community up to an even larger audience.
• Snapping photos and sharing them on Instagram is quick, painless and takes barely more effort than the act of taking the photo.
• Photos on Instagram can be cross posted to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Tumbler and more. In most cases, the cross posted images show up in other networks the same as if they were posted directly.
• Instagram enables users to LIKE or comment on images a la Facebook style. Comments can sometimes turn into conversations between the users and/or the brand.

Cons:

• Images can only be uploaded via the mobile app.
• Images on mobile devices are small due to the screen size so detailed images have less impact.

Tips:

• Add an interesting and/or engaging caption to every photo you post on Instagram. Keep in mind that the caption is the text that is included when you cross post your photos to Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere. A good caption might make a big difference whether or not folks check out your image when cross posted to other sites.
• Similar to Twitter, Instagram supports the use of hashtags. Also like Twitter, the hashtags on Instagram are searchable directly on the Instagram app. Adding hashtags will greatly increase the reach of any photos you post beyond your direct followers on Instagram. I recommend initially posting your image with a meaningful caption and then adding one or more hashtag to the image as a follow up comment. This way you are still able to have a clean caption, especially if you cross post the image, and then the added benefit of the hashtag. In most cases you will add a hashtag related to the content of the photo. For example… if you posted an image of a model wearing your newest line of sneakers you might add the hashtag #shoes or #fashion. People searching for those hashtags will find your relevant photo. You might be surprised to see that the most active hashtags are very broad and can be can be appended to most images. To see what the most popular hashtags are being used at any given time scroll down to the “Top 100 Tags” list here: http://web.stagram.com/hot/. I’ve seen engagement double just by adding an appropriate hashtag.
• All Instagram hashtag searches generate a feed that can be subscribed to via RSS. This means, with a little help from a programmer you can pull a hashtag feed into a web page or app. To get the feed for a hashtag use http://instagr.am/tags/[hashtag name]/feed/recent.rss. 
• Create promotion specific hashtags and encourage Instagram users to shoot photos that fit the theme or subject matter of your hashtag. Then using the hashtag feed you can collect all of the photos and display it in one place. My local news recently started asking residents to contribute great photos in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. You can see what people have shared here.
• Want to make your images a bit more dynamic and interesting? Consider using an app like Diptic to creatively display more than one image in one. This is a good way to tell a quick story or showcase multiple angles of a subject all within one image.
• Instagram doesn’t currently provide analytics. Until they do, get some basic stats related to your account using a service like http://statigr.am/

Curating and Collecting Images

It’s no secret that Pinterest is the talk of the town lately. With well over 10 million users and a growth rate that has been outpacing just about every other social web site to date Pinterest has caught the attention of brands and marketers curious how to tap into it’s very active community. I even highlighted a few ways you might use Pinterest for marketing research in a previous post.

A study from Shareaholic shows that, to some publishers,  Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.  The popular site seems to satiate the inner hunter (those scouring the web for great images to pin) and gatherers (those who enjoy collecting and organizing the pins that others share directly on the site) in many of us. Social bookmarking site Delicious.com had a very similar model around sharing and collecting links to sites, but never caught on with mainstream users, likely because collecting text links wasn’t very fun for the average person.

Pinterest is visually rich and feels very much like the experience of window shopping at your favorite mall, enticing you to dive in and out of images that catch your eye or quickly add it to one of your pin boards (a collection of images) to check out later. Bottom line, lots of folks are addicted to Pinterest. Will it’s popularity be sustainable? Only time will tell, but brands like Whole Foods and Lowe’s are creating a presence on the site and seeing a decent amount of engagement.

Pros:

• Pinterest’s user-base continues to grow and shows little signs of slowing down making it one of the largest and most active communities on the web
• The user experience on Pinterest makes liking, repinning and commenting on images quick and painless encouraging more engagement from less tech savvy users.
• The highly visual nature of Pinterest makes it one of the best online communities for design, DIY, home improvement, fashion, food, gadgets and other similar brands.

Cons:

• The user-base has been noted at around 90% women. This is excellent for some brands, but may be limiting for others that cater to a more male demographic.
• Brands that provide services or products that don’t naturally translate into compelling images will likely see much less engagement. Whereas other types of brands may simply post images of their products, they will have to get more creative with the images they share. For example: A law firm would have to think out of the box to make any use of Pinterest in comparison to an iPhone case maker.
• Sharing your own content is fine, but pinning content from other parties is a current point of discussion amongst some folks that think Pinterest may be traveling into rough waters regarding the use of copyrighted images. The Pinterest team seems to be trying to address this sooner rather than later.

Tips:

• All images on Pinterest can include a link. This link can point to a page that includes more detail and a way to purchase a product, a post on your blog where the image was featured or just about anywhere else. You can manually upload any image, but always make sure that you include a link to drive traffic to your site.
• Find interest ways to integrate collections of pinned images into larger marketing campaigns. Texas advertising agency GSD&M used Pinterest boards as a way to collect interesting information about the Austin area in an effort to welcome SXSW conference attendees.
• Remember that you can pin not only images on Pinterest, but videos as well. We use it to create a pin board collection of our podcast episodes from our SoLoMo Show Podcast.
• Currently, Pinterest does not have any analytics. That may change in the future, but to get a decent snapshot of your overall Pinterest account and numbers per board check out http://www.pinreach.com/

The Wrap Up

So there you have it. A few ideas to help you solve your image problem. How might you be able to take advantage of these visual strategies with your business? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Related articles

• 3 Ways Instagram Is Promoting Big Brands (socialmediatoday.com)
• 5 Reasons Your Infographics Are Falling Flat (outspokenmedia.com)

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Megan Feltes, a member of the content team for the email marketing and communications company Emma.

How to deal with mistakes, failures and assorted slip-ups

Email may ultimately be sent and tracked by machines and robots, but it’s still a human endeavor at heart. And as such, email is vulnerable to human error. B2B campaigns are no exception, and errors in emails to customers can feel especially magnified. No matter how many times you read (and re-read) your email copy, a mistake may sneak through. It could be a simple misspelling or a glaringly incorrect link. Did 6,000 recipients see the wrong event date on your email invite? Yikes. Or you could do everything perfectly, but still experience unexpected fallout. Did your website crash after a free shipping offer caused a mad rush? Double yikes. While possibly embarrassing and humbling, mistakes are not the end of the world. Email’s strength lies in its innate timeliness and flexibility.

via Meredith Atwater – opensourceway

We’ve all hit send and quickly realized that something wasn’t quite right. Whether you made a simple typo or a more involved mistake, how you respond is key. In many cases, you might not have to build an entirely new campaign. Instead, quickly correct and resend a copy of the original email while identifying the issue upfront. Adjust the subject line and add a short message at the top of the campaign, identifying what’s been corrected in case some of your readers opened the faulty version. Email recipients have become used to seeing “correction” subject lines in their inbox. In fact, if you catch the mistake and send the corrected version quickly, people will most likely skip over the first message anyway. If it’s a situation that takes a longer recovery time and a more in-depth reworking of your initial campaign, consider drawing more attention to what’s different by sending a separate, dedicated apology email.

Minimizing email mistakes & making good on your apology

As you smooth over the situation, here are a few more things to consider:

• Try to avoid mistakes in the first place. While this knowledge may not feel great post-mistake, it’s something to keep in mind for future campaigns. Never send an email newsletter or promotion — no matter how insignificant it might seem — without getting some other eyes on it first. Create a special group of test email recipients who you trust to double check personalization, links, spelling and even inbox rendering. (Most email service providers, including Emma, allow and actually encourage test emails.)
• Keep your correction message clear. Address the mistake in the subject line and be specific about what was incorrect in the copy. If it’s simply a quick followup to a small mistake, don’t add more content beyond the note up top. If it’s a dedicated apology email, resist the urge to clutter the message with irrelevant information.
• Have a sense of humor. While you shouldn’t go outside of your normal brand voice, it’s okay to laugh at yourself a little. This example from the Workshop for Youth and Families pairs a humorous subject line — “In our haste to cut and paste…” — with a fun image to bring a bit of levity to their admission of a mistake.
• Give a peace offering. Consider offering a small discount or extending a special offer. An unexpected deal along with your mea culpa will surprise and delight your recipients and make them forget the mistake all together.

And realize that an email snafu may actually be a happy mistake. Unfortunate moments can be useful in reinforcing your authenticity and vision, and email is the perfect channel to spread the word. Recently, Ohio-based Jeni’s Ice Cream sent an email announcing that new cake-infused flavors were coming soon. When the flavors didn’t appear in stores on schedule, they sent a followup email with a personal message from owner Jeni Britton Bauer. She warmly explained that the batches just weren’t up to snuff and that she wanted to make sure her customers got the best quality — so the wait would be a little longer. Jeni’s is known for impeccable quality, and the apology message assured customers that the delay, while a short-term letdown, was actually a good thing for cake lovers in the long run.

An email mistake doesn’t have to be a PR nightmare

What if your mistake goes beyond a few typos or inaccurate details? If you’ve encountered a more serious problem that affects your customers’ experience, money or future loyalty, it’s even more important to address the situation.

• Be prompt and honest about what happened. If ignoring the situation would be bad, lying about it would be even worse. Your email subscribers are one of your brand’s greatest assets and they’ve given you their trust in the form of their email address. Don’t abuse or ignore it. Get out in front of the issue by sending a prompt, forthcoming message. You may even build stronger relationships and trust in the process.
• Say you’re sorry and mean it. Your readers expect you to take the mistake seriously. Be transparent about what you’re doing to fix the problem or prevent it from happening again. A little empathy and a human voice go a long way, too. A personal message from a staff member is more meaningful than a blanket statement from your marketing team.
• Expect a few disgruntled responses. If you nail steps one and two, you will hopefully head off most (if any) backlash. But, no matter how honest and sincere you are, you won’t make everyone happy. Stay available and responsive. Make sure responses to your “from address” go to a monitored inbox so nothing falls through the cracks. If someone takes it out of email and to social media, be accommodating, but stay on message. Don’t police your pages or delete comments. Respond, shake it off and move on.

And, remember, even the best laid plans — and email marketing campaigns — will sometimes go awry. Keep a level head, and have a recovery plan. Your recipients will be forgiving. After all, they’re human, too.

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Megan is part of Emma’s content team in our Nashville office. One of our resident bakers, Megan is always searching for new ways to incorporate Nutella into recipes. She’s also a yoga enthusiast and bears an uncanny resemblance to Julianne Moore. Read more from Megan on the Emma blog.

Emma’s a web-based communications service that’s taken a unique approach to email marketing and surveys. We think it should be easy to create, send and track emails and surveys. It should be designed for you. And it should even be sharable for your audience and fun to use. We’re all about style and results, and it’s why more than 30,000 small and mid-size businesses, non-profits and agencies have chosen Emma to power their email marketing newsletters and campaigns. Learn more about Emma and try us for free.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Tara DeMarco, who works as the Social Specialist at Bazaarvoice. 

In a few clicks, today’s social consumer can wield more influence, over more people, and in more ways than past consumers could ever have hoped for. The collective influence of billions of consumers interacting with people and things online leaves behind a trail of archivable, analyzable social data.

In our latest Conversation Index, Bazaarvoice analyzed over 11 million pieces of this social data to understand the people behind it. Here are some of the insights we uncovered, with tips for capitalizing on them.

Offline shoppers are just as social online

Shoppers who buy in brick-and-mortar stores are just as likely as online shoppers to give online feedback – customer content is split evenly between the two groups. Most businesses, however, target only their online shoppers for feedback. Only 45% of in-store buyers receive an email asking them to review their purchases, versus 80% of online shoppers.

If you’re only asking for feedback from online shoppers, you’re missing a massive opportunity for more engagement and more valuable social data. Bring your in-store shoppers into your community by inviting them share their opinions online – through in-store signage, calls-to-action on receipts, catalogues, bag inserts, etc. Train store staff to let customers know how their feedback helps others shop. And ask for shoppers’ email addresses at the point of sale to follow up with a post-purchase email.

In-store shoppers are less satisfied with products

Across the board, in-store shoppers leave lower product ratings. This lower satisfaction is especially visible in consumers over 55, and in men. It seems that poor in-store experiences leave shoppers less satisfied with their purchases. Or perhaps online shoppers make better-informed decisions. With access to research, opinions from product owners, and more product options, online shoppers may be better equipped to find the right products for their needs.

Improve your in-store experience and help shoppers buy smarter by bringing the best of your website into your stores. Include product ratings on shelf tags, and direct shoppers to your mobile app for more information. Make it easy for them to research products on smartphones or in-store kiosks using barcode scanners. And offer free in-store Wi-Fi to aid their research.

Advances in augmented reality (AR) and near-field communication will continue making mobile a more integral part of in-store shopping. Imagine an AR overlay of star ratings and and related tweets, seen just by holding a smartphone up to store shelves. This isn’t far off.

Mobile and tablet users burn the midnight oil

After work hours, mobile visits to brand sites nearly match non-mobile visits. And iPads rule late-night shopping: from midnight to 5am, more site visitors are using iPads than any other device, including personal computers. Still, many businesses don’t have reps available at night. You’d never open a physical store without knowledgeable staff ready to help shoppers – your website shouldn’t be any different.

Measure your traffic by time of day, and see when conversions and conversations occur most often. Make customer support, chat, or other services available during these times. As appropriate, respond to tweets, Facebook posts, and shopper questions as soon as possible – even when they’re asked in the middle of the night. And be sure to optimize your site for mobile and tablet traffic – especially iPad users – or you could miss out on half of your after-hour shopping activity.

There’s much more in The Conversation Index, and Jeremiah Owyang and Chris Silva will join us to talk about these and other findings in a webinar on April 3rd. Until then, enjoy the infographic below.

Tara DeMarco is a writer, futurist, and social enthusiast. She writes about customer centricity and social strategy for the Bazaarvoice blog, an AdAge Power 150 blog. Follow her on Twitter at @txTDM.

As I was sitting at Jason Falls’ SxSW party on a rainy night in Austin, waiting for a friend, I checked Twitter. I was wondering what was trending from SxSW.

The #1 trending topic on Friday night was this: #GetAustin2Philly.

What did this mean? Bring SxSW to Philadelphia? I was intrigued, so I checked out the tweets.

The #1 trending topic on the Friday night of SxSW Interactive was about … a bunch of teenagers trying to get Austin Mahone, a 15 year old YouTube singing sensation, to appear in Philadelphia.

Number One!

Wow. That’s a lot of teenagers tweeting a lot of tweets.

But wait – wasn’t the common wisdom that teenagers aren’t tweeting? That they prefer texting and Facebook over everything else, and Twitter was never going to catch on with them?

Wrong.

Teens are increasingly turning to Twitter to follow artists and pop culture icons, take part in (or create) memes and trends, and express their innermost thoughts. More and more, teens are also using Twitter as a way to escape their parents’ prying eyes, as parents are far more likely to have a Facebook account than Twitter; it seems many parents don’t realize that their kids are even tweeting, and kids are keeping their accounts private, away from their parents and sometimes also from those who might bully them online. Twitter also allows for anonymity, so teens can take on new (or multiple) personalities, and further isolate themselves from parents or unwanted peers.

According to Pew, teen use of digital media is growing overall; 80% of teens use online social networks. An interesting Pew statistic which may have led to the #GetAustin2Philly trending topic is that more than 2x the number of girls use Twitter: 22% of girls vs. 10% of boys. For teenagers, Twitter is an outlet for fandom, gossip, and chatter; get @mentioned by a celebrity or teen idol and your popularity is sure to rise. Twitter is now a digital autograph book.

Along with the rise of teens on Twitter, marketers who need to reach teens must change their tactics. It’s no longer wise to assume this demographic is not on Twitter, so for brands who were hedging their bets against Twitter or only dipping their toe in the water, it’s time to go full-force.

Marketing to teens is always a delicate balance, as teens are turned off by overt marketing and notoriously brand fickle. Here are some thoughts on using Twitter to market to the 13-19 set.

1. Have a voice. Increasingly, customers are looking for brands to be interesting, human and personable. Building a brand voice that is clever, creative and sustainable will appeal to teenagers as well as adults.
2. Be real. Teens have their bullshit alert on high, and they’re becoming increasingly savvy consumers, so don’t assume you can pull anything over on them. Be honest, transparent and open with them and they’ll show you their power to rally friends (and frenemies) to your cause.
3. Be conversational. Broadcasting never works well on Twitter, but even less so for teens. Go for a high ratio of @replies to regular tweets, jumping in to existing conversations and creating your own. Ask questions. Ask for advice and input. Look for questions to answer. And make it about everything but your product. If you do conversation well, you’ll get plenty of product love as a result.
4. Learn what’s cool. But don’t overdo it. It’s hard for an adult marketer to admit that we really don’t know what’s cool anymore. But in order to win over this group, we have to figure it out. Enlist appropriately-aged kids, cousins and neighbors to throw concepts at and get feedback. Be careful not to go too far, or you could see a backlash.
5. Make them feel special. Teens don’t want to just be another follower, they want to be followed and recognized. If you haven’t had a policy of following everyone who follows you, it may be time to rethink that strategy (avoid obvious webcam girls and spammers, of course). Tweet @ your teen followers when you can: thank them for following, RT them, mention them on #FollowFriday.
6. Use promotions, but sparingly. Teens are quick to jump on demo-appropriate “tweet this to win” promos (they’ll do it even for a t-shirt, unlike jaded adults) but the potential for promo fatigue is high. Teens who have protected accounts or are tweeting anonymously are also less likely to ask followers to “please RT.”

I’ve been studying this demographic quite a bit lately, as I’m creating the first-of-its-kind conference for tween and teen bloggers and their families this summer, the Digital Family Summit (and it happens to be in Philly). If you’re someone who knows a lot about marketing to teens, raising digital kids, or you know tweens/teens who blog, I encourage you to consider applying, or ask them to apply, to speak at the conference. And if you’re the parent of a kid who blogs, vlogs or creates other forms of digital media, I hope to see you and your teen blogger there!

If social media is really like a dinner party, it seems like we’re missing something … humor.

Humor is one of the most effective-and under-appreciated tactics in communications. This applies to every day business discussions, professional presentations, and yes, social media. Look at Pinterest. Some of the most popular pins are funny or offbeat. Twitter and Facebook is even better. Who can’t resist a clever or funny tweet, or conversation starter?

Good humor works because it connects with people at an emotional level. We live in a very serious world. Humor provides us a mental break. For companies, it’s a great way to come across more engaging and naturally-more human.

But humor has to be handled right. Just being funny online is not enough, and there are risks. Here are five tips to keep in mind as you engage with humor.

1. Use humor creatively, particularly when it comes to explaining complex subjects. And don’t be afraid to be a little edgy. Look at this infographic which is focused on helping users improve their Facebook Edgerank score. Rather than just a dry listing of tips, “Conquer the Facebook” uses clever humor with news stream posts by “legendary Facebook conquerors” like Julius Caesar (Ex: #5 Ask for Likes- Genghis Kahn states: “Ask for likes if you’re a Mongol with a funny decapitation story.”  Clever and funny.
2. Keep it short and simple. This is not standup comedy with a story leading up to a punchline;  it’s nice to get a laugh, but often it’s good enough just to get a smile. Humor online usually needs to be direct, pithy, swift. Cool quotations can work. This morning my first tweet was: “‘Do not take life too seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive.’ Elbert Hubbard (Relax…it’s Friday)” If your company is about empowering other people, you could try something like this: “You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there” Yogi Berra (Yogi Berra quotations are often goofy but they still get a smile.)
3. Make sure it’s consistent with your brand. It might be funny to poke fun at a stupid comment by a politician, but how does that help your brand? (In fact it might hurt it.) But be ready to pounce when the opportunity arrives.  When Twitter.com suggested that my wife follow a certain brand,  @glutenfreewoman quipped. “Twitter suggested I follow WheatThins. Uh, no thanks”  (Wheat, of course, has gluten-and the tweet delighted some of her gluten followers … It’s akin to pitching hamburgers to a vegetarian. Twitter might want to fine-tune its advertising placements).
4. Pick your targets carefully: It’s okay to poke fun at yourself, the weather, and other innocuous subjects. And big institutions can sometimes be targeted (carefully). Stay away from political or religious issues, and don’t target any race, gender or groups like senior citizens.
5. Use humor selectively. Humor can also backfire is abused, particularly with sarcasm. Who can forget incidents like the FedEx PR fiasco, where an Ketchum PR manager tweeted the following on the flight into Memphis to visit FedEx, a major customer: “True confusion but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say-I would die if I had to live here.”  FedEx officials weren’t amused and slammed the agency with a stinging letter than went public.

Yes, there are risks in using humor, so think first or risk a backlash. With videos, commercials and bigger productions, consider testing it with different types of people or internal groups. What may seem hilarious to you might offend others.

Recent example: the protests and petitions that ensued in reaction to Huggies’ “Have Dad Put Huggies To The Test,” campaign. The commercials depicted dads as inattentive caregivers, sparking outrage among many fathers who saw this as a throwback to the MadMen era. On the other hand, this Old Spice commercial (“The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”) was pretty funny and got over 40 million YouTube hits.

So humor is a bit of a crapshoot, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. What are your thoughts on using humor in social media? Got some good examples? Share and drop links in the comments!

Have You Registered For Explore Nashville?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, Friday, April 13 in Nashville, Tennessee! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

We don’t typically offer up blog posts to other people’s e-books and the like at SME. We’ve got our own online learning community for stuff that that, after all. When we do, you should know they’re pretty good.

My friend Shashi Bellamkonda turned me on to Hy.ly’s free ebook on using the new Facebook Timeline to get conversions and even return. I read through it and thought it was good enough to share. You do have to register to get it, but it’s free.

Check out hy.ly’s offer, appropriately made through their Facebook page here.

One of the most satisfying experiences is having a website take off in popularity.

People are linking to you and sharing your stuff, responding to your emails, spending time and leaving comments, and in some cases opening their wallets.

It’s a love train of feel-good moments, back-patting, fist bumps and fist pumps.

I’ve been lucky enough to be part of this a few times.

Image by Allie Caulfield

But I’ve also been on the other side of the proverbial digital media tracks. In the area where you roll your windows up, put your head down and wait for it to be over. In a ghost town on the web.

It happened again on a recent lark of a side project where I didn’t take my own advice and ended up making some stupid mistakes.

Fueled (and blinded) by my own idea, I killed my last blog before it truly had a chance to live. Here are the lessons I learned:

I made decisions too quickly, and didn’t think about their long-term impact. Fools rush in and I was right behind.  It’s best to map out ideas, wireframe concepts, storyboard the user experience and think logically about your approach.

I underestimated the amount of resources it would require. Building digital traction takes and patience. I put too much emphasis on launching and not enough on the marathon march that comes after. With a broad market to cover, I quickly became overwhelmed with trying to keep up with posting and coverage was a mile wide and an inch deep. No one was visiting because:

I failed to identify a niche. Success stories usually stem from people who looked to solve something very specific. Where they identified a niche, guarded and served it.

I jumped into a fast-growing market without thinking specifically about what the angle and voice would be. (list examples of sites that do this well). In today’s climate it’s “the nicher the richer.”

I focused on technological functionality, not content. It’s easy to buy a domain, install WordPress and a fancy theme, set up an email program and create social media profiles.

That’s because these are the known knowns. The things that are straight forward and come with instructions. The kind of things anyone can do, technically speaking. But there’s a difference between a digital presence and a digital footprint – the footprint actually leaves an impact, and takes time to develop.

I didn’t give it a face. And it had no unique brand qualities. I didn’t put my face on it and I didn’t associate myself (or any individual human) with it. People like to know who they are hearing from. The “voice of God” is dead in journalism and that is especially true online. The social media revolution was built on the idea that people want to connect with people. Trying to invent a brand out of the ether – especially one that people will connect with – is a tough exercise.

I focused too much on structure, not enough on content. Too much on the launch, not enough on the carrying-through. I didn’t have a unique perspective and I didn’t act human.

And I ended up creating just another ghost town on the web.

There’s an overabundance of chatter on marketing blogs and websites these days about branding. Brand this, branding that … most of the people spouting it off are referring to marketing but don’t realize it. They use the word “brand” because they had a meeting once with an account planner at an advertising agency who said something about “branding” and it seemed smart. So they added it to their tradespeak.

One person who knows the difference between branding and marketing and has helped a fair number of companies realize how to exercise branding in the digital world is John Morgan. He’s the author of Brand Against The Machine and is speaking on branding in the digital world at Explore Nashville coming upon April 13. (See information below to get a special SME reader discount.)

I caught up with John last week to talk about his book, his Explore Nashville talk and lots of other things. Give it a watch or listen:

You won’t want to miss the business insights John has to give at Explore Nashville. He’ll be speaking there, along with an all-star lineup that includes H&R Block’s Scott Gulbransen, The Now Revolution co-author Amber Naslund, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Return on Influence author Mark Schaefer, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist, Nichole Kelly of Full Frontal ROI, Tim Hayden from 44 Doors, Sam Ford from Peppercom and more. The event will also feature a number of excellent software providers and companies to help you navigate the waters of digital marketing. They’ll bring their knowledge to share as well as their products. This is a must-attend event, so register now!

The full day’s content, breakfast, lunch and a cocktail reception is $400. But let’s see if you’re paying attention! For being an SME reader, you can use the Promotional Code ILOVESME and get the original early price of $250! Can’t beat that! Go reserve your spot at GoToExplore.co or in the form below!

Explore is a five-city conference event series from Social Media Explorer and presented by Expion and Raven Internet Marketing Tools. Learn more and sign up for email updates for the city nearest you at GoToExplore.co.

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