I realized this is due to the way social media allows for a small headshot that is square in shape. When you see people trying to fit their entire logo in that square, inevitably it looks awful, cut off and most times unreadable. Now some would say, you shouldn’t separate the icon from the word mark, but I don’t subscribe to that theory. I say use it as a graphic element, a watermark, or even a small mark on proposal interior pages. With applications like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the rest, the full name of the company resides high on a page and is the same font for every company. This creates a democratizing effect across the board. Meaning, no company is elevated over another in this way. Yet, by using just the icon to separate yourself from the pack, a unique identifier creates impact. It says, I can make this dull and dreary social media page stand out from the rest. Below are a couple of examples of logos I’ve done that seem to work really well in this context.

The Scheiderer Partners logo utilizes curvy and interlinked S&P characters against a very straightforward treatment of the name. The “partners” are both very lively people with a great sense of humor who are also writers. Since Scheiderer is indeed a tough name to spell, we opted for simplicity through upper and lowercase letters. This allowed us to bring the “personality” of the logo out through the icon itself. It’s playful, it links two letters together signifying fluid teamwork, and the orange color creates a vibrant punch. Below the icon commands attention in Facebook and Twitter.

Here the icon stands out and even works very small almost live a fav icon

Another example is NBIS or the Network for Business innovation and Sustainability. Obviously the name of the organization is way too long to get into some tiny, square configuration. Instead we use the icon portion with the acronym in all our social media. The examples below show the icon on a branded YouTube channel page and Twitter. No matter how tiny it gets, it’s still readable.

Email marketing is a great way for you to connect with potential and existing and clients. *Researchers estimate that United States firms alone spent US $400 million on email marketing in 2006. With so many email marketing solutions available to businesses it can be difficult for the uninitiated to pick a solution that meets their needs.

At Rhizome we help many clients create and implement effective email marketing strategies. While doing this we have used several of the most popular email marketing solutions available today. Presented below are brief summaries on some of the major players in the market today. Hopefully it will help you to create an effective email marketing strategy that suits you and your company.

The cost of these services can vary depending on the size of your email list and on how many emails you intend to send on a monthly basis. Most of the services offer a 30 day free trial which allows you to shop around and find the one that best fits your needs.

Constant Contact

Pros

• Offers helpful and thorough customer support
• Has an easy-to-use system for adding and managing contacts
• Offers comprehensive reports analyzing subscriber actions
• Templates offered are incredibly flexible
• Allows you to import contacts from Outlook
• Allows unsubscribers to fill out feedback form
• Allows you to create an A/B test campaign

Cons

• Offers 1.7 MB of picture hosting (Industry Benchmark is 5-10MB)

Constant Contact has a great Contact Management system and incredibly knowledgeable Customer Support. However, they only allow you to host five images. Which means you will either have to host your images elsewhere or pay for extra image storage. The Constant Contact admin is easy to use, offers a multitude of templates and is a favorite with both beginners and advanced users.

Constant Contact has been very popular with our clients and the feedback we have received in regards to their service has been positive.

MailChimp

Pros

• Has an easy-to-use system for adding and managing contacts
• Offers comprehensive reports analyzing subscriber actions
• Allows unsubscribers to fill out feedback form
• Allows you to create an A/B test campaign
• Pricing by number of emails and by number of contacts is available
• Offers Google Analytics integration

Cons

• Does not have telephone customer support
• Difficult to style items, be ready to compromise your design

MailChimp does well with Contact Management and Analyzing. They could use more flexibility in the Email Creation process. MailChimp’s Customer Support was found to be direct and courteous through email and live chat services, but they do not offer phone support.

Currently MailChimp’s service is free if you have less than 2,000 subscribers. This makes it a very cost effective choice for businesses with a smaller client base.

Vertical Response

Pros

• Offers flexible and easy-to-use templates and email editor
• Offers helpful and thorough customer support
• Offers comprehensive reports analyzing subscriber actions
• Offers 25MB of picture hosting (Industry Benchmark is 5-10MB)
• Someone checks and approves your email before it is sent out to subscribers.
• Allows you to create an A/B test campaign
• Offers Google Analytics integration

Cons

• Does not have an auto responder
• Does not have a spam checking tool
• Reports offered do not accurately reflect users’ actions

Vertical Response has excellent Customer Support and Email Creation tools. They also offer a large amount of picture hosting space for your emails. Vertical Response does a good job on Email Deliverability because they have a real person checking your email before it is sent out, but they do not have an automatic tool that scans it for spam.

iContact

Pros

• Offers helpful and thorough customer support
• Allows you to import contacts from Outlook

Cons

• Doesn’t offer free removal of logo from emails
• Reports offered do not accurately reflect users’ actions

iContact does a good job on Contact Management because they allow you to import contacts from Outlook. While they are lacking a few features, including integration with Google Analytics and the free removal of their logo from emails, we found their Customer Support to be quick and helpful. They do well with Email Deliverability due to the high percentage of emails that went through and their spam checking tool.

We found that their WYSIWYG editor to be somewhat limited but easy to use. A HTML editor is available for advanced users.

…..

If you are interested in creating your own email marketing strategy and would like more information on how Rhizome can help you please do not hesitate to contact us.

* – WikiPedia/DMA: “The Power of Direct Marketing: ROI, Sales, Expenditures and Employment in the U.S., 2006-2007 Edition”, Direct Marketing Association, October 2006

Today I attended a Webinar by Guy Kawasaki on WebEx, entitled, Get “Social” with Guy Kawasaki, his secrets plus live Q&A. Mr Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine, a previous Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. and author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way.

Mr. Kawasaki’s talk today demonstrated how he uses Twitter as a marketing weapon. He wisked back and forth showing examples of how he sets his tweets up to repeat every so often during the day, while searching for new content, garnering new followers, and really how to get the most out of Twitter. He actually offered up some great stuff that got me rethinking Twitter and how I can serve my clients and my own business better.

One of the biggest takeaways both James and I got out of the event was his language around getting people to notice you. He spoke eloquently about how it’s easy to be charming, fascinating and enchanting if you are a big celebrity, but much harder to do when you are not.

Those three words got to me. In a world full of technology it’s so easy to lose grace and flounder into the depths of trying to sell services or products to an unknown world. But I like those three words and they connote what seems to be lacking in our technology driven lives. Oh we try to be clever and playful on our facebook pages, and a little more professional on our LinkedIn sites, but the real question is, how do we engage people in a longer conversation or a longer look at our products or services?

I imagine the use of Twitter this way. There’s a dinner party being held.  Different companies are represented at the table. Many times when we speak about branding we talk about the personality of a company. For now I’ll use Monopoly game pieces of the Shoe, the Wheelbarrow, the Dog, and the Top Hat to represent the different companies.  The Shoe seems quiet and reserved, while the Dog and the Top Hat bounce around from topic to topic, making pleasant conversation and capturing the attention of others in the room. This is charming, fascinating and enchanting in action. In the immediate world of Twitter are we always trying to be the life of the party so people recognize us, and follow us. The Wheelbarrow becomes a follower and soon the Shoe joins in.  The Shoe however gets indignant about something the Top Hat has said or done and lambasts the Top Hat on his Twitter. The Top Hat now has two choices. He can either address the issues of the Wheelbarrow or simply “Block” him.  By responding at first politely to the Wheelbarrow, he engages his adversary and may even make him a believer or regain his confidence. But if the Wheelbarrow insists on being indignant, it is probably not a customer the Top Hat wants to have anyway.

The point is this. With Twitter we engage at a dinner party level. We bring topics to the table that some may find interesting and we don’t get a chance to delve too deeply. We flit around within an area of interest or expertise, and people follow because there are mavens who are seen as great sources of information and we keep them on our “good” list. By being charming, fascinating and enchanting a company or person can be held in high esteem as a subject matter experts, and garner lots of good attention. I like to think that even Twitter can be used to show there are good conversationalists out there even in its most shorthanded form.

If you would like to learn more about Guy Kawasaki’s presentation on How to Use Twitter as a marketing weapon, start here.