5 Type Turn-Offs that Are Exit Only

Filed Under Basics, Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog | 20 Comments

I’m Only 1 Reader

Spend enough time as a publisher and when you read for fun, you can’t help seeing publishing things . . . if they’re great I comment on them. Reinforce good behavior is what I learned in teachers’ school. If they’re not good typography, I try to overlook them and keep reading. If I simply cannot, usually I just move on shaking my head. I go back to my own blog to make sure that I’m not doing the same thing.

YET when I see the same type issues happening from one blog to another, I think folks can’t see how the type looks and feels from this side of the computer. So I’ve started taking notes on what it’s like to be the reader. Of course, I’m only one reader, but I AM one reader. I’m one who will come back or I won’t. Read more

Great Find: Color and Font Codes

Filed Under Basics, Design, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Tools | 4 Comments

HTML Color and Font Codes

New Blogger Logo

When I first started blogging, I was anxious to do what I could do in print–add emphasis using color or maybe once on a rare occasion change the font for flavor. But I was new to HTML and the rules had me baffled. I recently found this simple tutorial that not only shows how, but also shows which fonts are those that usually work.

Great Find: Color in Your Text from Writing up.com
Type of article: HTML tutorial
Permalink: http://www.writingup.com/htmltutor/color_in_your_text_from_htmltutor
Target Audience: Folks who want to know more about HTML
Content: This tutorial starts out with the basic code for changing the font and the color of your text.

Then the tutorial offers two clicks further. The first click takes you to choosing type fonts. While you are there, you can see how each font looks and check whether it is available on your computer. The second click shows you a basic color chart and color words to allow a chance for experimentation.

This tutorial is great for new bloggers or for seasoned bloggers in a hurry looking for a color change in their typography.

Click this screenshot title to go there.

Color In Your Text Article

I’m adding this to the NEW BLOGGER PAGE in the side bar.

–ME “Liz Strauss

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Getting Customers to Stop by to See You

Filed Under Content, Customer Think, Design, Successful Blog | 1 Comment

Walking the Trade Show Floor

Customer Think Logo

Yesterday walking the trade show floor, I felt I was in a 3-D blog world. Aisles and aisle of blogs sitting side by side with real people in and around them. They were all in the same market, different niches. Some were not easy to tell apart. I was scanning the signage to get a clue. Oh my! 60% were woefully inadequate. Here’s what I saw.

  • Company names with not a hint of what they do.
  • A list of what the company does, but no name to pull it together.
  • Taglines that said abolutely nothing, i.e. making things happen — good things? bad things? It didn’t say.
  • Taglines that said the same five buzz words that I found at most every other booth.

It seemed clear to me that the folks who designed these books — 3-D blogs — were thinking of what they thought the customer should know rather than thinking of what the customer might have come to find out. Standing outside each booth that I’m talking about I only had one question. Read more

The “Got Milk?” Man, Chartreuse, & Liz Singing in Harmony

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Design, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 4 Comments

Where We Live and Breathe

BusinessWeekonline Logo

Advertising has a responsibility to act like a thing that is going to be unavoidably in the environment, where we live and breathe. And we have a responsibility to make that work in such a way that it is welcomed and not scorned.

–Jeff Goodby, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, of “Got Milk?” fame as quoted in BusinessWeekonline, Advertising Advice from the “Got Milk” Man

When a guy knows what he’s talking about, almost everything he says is worth quoting. That’s how I felt reading BusinessWeekonline Managing Editor, David Kiley’s interview with Jeff Goodby, the guy behind such famous advertising as the “Got Milk?” slogan. I wished that Mr. Goodby was required reading for every designer that I ever met or would meet. But then all of the good ones already subscribe to what Jeff Goodby was saying.

Mr. Goodby was talking about how the audience gets to pick what’s good.

I suppose it’s crystal clear already that he and I agree completely, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about a three-way conversation that’s been happening on three different subjects, in three different places, the same thing has been being said.

The “Got Milk?” Man, Chartreuse, and Liz

Jeff Goodby, Chartreuse, BETA, and Liz Strauss. What do we three have in common? A clear vision of how to reach and keep one. On three slightly different notes, we three each say things that sound a lot alike. Heck if we were on a street corner, we’d be doing some great harmony and collecting some serious cash.

Jeff Goodby said

Our job is to come up with more advertising that people actually seek out. It’s the same way with successful design. When you design something right, people don’t just accept it, they seek it out. And then they tell their friends about it or show it off.

Chartreuse said

Look at Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing).

These are the most profitable advertising business models around, because consumers tell advertisers what they’re looking for first, rather than advertisers telling consumers what they should buy and hoping for the best.

I said

Everett knew that being who you are is a bond with the community. It the basis on which all relationships are forged. Being any less and you’re only a bad facsimile of what you could be. Your personal brand can be the strongest advantage you bring to your business life.

Be brand YOU and you’re the only one. No one can compete with that.

Three separate takes on the same subject–Henry Ford you had a great idea, but your work is done. Rest in peace. The assembly line has lost its promise, and one-size-fits-all now fits no one.

Analysis–What Are We Saying?

Content is king, but the king reports to the Emperor. The Audience-Emperor knows damn well whether we’re wearing clothes and which designer made them too. We already decide what is relevant content to us and we tell advertisers by the way we use search engines. We already decide what ads work by the products we spend our money on. Jeff Goodby gets that, that’s why he respects us and voices a responsibility to keeping our environment filled with advertising we enjoy. He realizes he is one of us.

Advertising we seek out. There’s a concept–a simple wonder, a basic what if. The advertisers who get it will be the ones who are us, not the ones who think, “They versus us.”

Strategy–To Promote Your Business

None of us are partners in a fabulous San Francisco Advertising firm. Though I’d love to work for Mr. Goodby, I don’t suppose he’ll be offering me a job soon. I’m guessing you’re probably in the same place as I am. So how might we push this analysis into strategy for our brand and our businesses?

  • Be authentic, practical, and nice. Don’t promote your business on its glorious, high falutin’ intangible values. Do needs-benefits selling. Know me and what I need and show me how you provide it better, with more-invested, gentler service than the other guy ever could.
  • Make it fun to work with you. No matter what you’re involved in, it should be something that adds to the world of enjoyment. Fun is magnetic and always feels free. It’s hard enough to find these days. Jeff Goodby says it has to be simple and interesting to the consumer in the way the cowabduction spoof he did for Milk Producers was, if you want folks to seek it out. If you offer that kind of creativity to me, you can bet, I’ll not only seek it out, I’ll forgive the occasional slip.
  • Let me be who I am. Don’t try to change the way I do things. Trust that I know my needs better than you do. Show me how I can do what I already do more easily. That will win my loyalty. That will get me to talk about what a good relationship you have with your customers.
  • Let me be smarter than you are. and sweeter too. Chartreuse says, “Treat the smart girls like they are pretty and the pretty girls like they are smart.” Believe me, it works for boys too. That is the key to customer relationships and to building customer evangelists. That is the intangible value-added, making the customer the center of all you do.
  • Know the upside-down nature of the Internet. Understand that it will move out into the real-world environment, not the other way around. Make something so good that folks will seek you out to find it. We find what works well and stick with it. We will keep looking until the one worth sticking with is found.
  • Offer a product or a service that fills an actual need I have. I put this last on purpose. The changes in the world are happening so fast that needs are opening at an unprecedented rate of explosion. Some will close right back up again by getting filled or expiring. Think through the product or service you offer. Make certain it has staying power, be sure that I am willing and able to pay what it will cost you to make it available. Then add that you include the unique BIG IDEA of your brand so that I will only want YOU to do the work for me.

    • The power base has slowly shifted to the audience-consumer. A busines without customers is not a business. I have that tatooed where you cannot look.

    More MSM Unhappiness

    Until now control of the distribution channels and advertising markets, limited what the consumer could access, but with the WWW shopping mall, I can search the world over to find that little store that has the “just right” item I am looking for. I no longer need to settle for one-size fits all.

    Chartreuse and I know this. We see it in our friends and ourselves. Smart advertisers, such as Jeff Goodby, are well aware of this too. Those who cannot see it–the telcos, Internet providers and the Mainstream Media–will fight to save the old world way of doing business. They want to keep those advertising dollars that Jeff Goodby sees turning into entertaining Internet websites that advertise as well as delight.

    There is significant money involved and significant changes to life styles should Jeff Goodby’s vision of advertising–one that Chartreuse and I also see–become the future. Were I the Mainstream Media, I don’t think I would want to lose control.

    Everyday the world gets smaller. At the moment, you and I get larger and more powerful. Some folks don’t like that idea.

    Personally, I do.

    It would be hard to break out into a chorus of “Blue Moon” under a streetlight in Chicago with Chartreuse and Jeff Goodby, if someone else were around telling us what to do.

    –ME “Liz” Strauss

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    Blog Promotion: Checking Out Curb Appeal

    Filed Under Branding, Design, Marketing, Successful Blog | 7 Comments

    Good Read Sign

    Steve McKee writes the Smart Answers column in Business Week. Last Friday he was talking about how everything a company does comes down to marketing. His column was replete with examples and well made points, but I was particularly taken with this story.

    . . . The other night, my wife and I decided to try a new restaurant. But when we turned down its street, we just kept on driving, never even getting out of the car. It was the sign that gave us pause. It was simply a flat, translucent panel with an amateurish, one-color logo slapped on — the kind of sign you would see on a check-cashing operation in a seedy strip mall. The sign was of low quality and in bad taste — imagery not well associated with a fine-dining establishment. With plenty of other good choices we simply didn’t want to take the risk of spoiling our dinner date.

    For all I know, the food would have been amazing and the chef an undiscovered gem, but the restaurant never got the chance to prove it because we naturally assumed the experience would be as unprofessional as the sign. As a result, we passed.

    Perhaps after a few more quiet weekends the proprietor will realize that marketing is everything and will do something about the sign. Perhaps not. But I’m determined to apply the lesson to my own business and think about marketing in a much broader context. Are you?

    –Steve McKee, Business Week, Smart Answers : All Together Now “Marketing Is Everything,” February 10, 2006

    Checking Out Curb Appeal

    After I read Steve McKee’s story, I started wondering. How many readers are choosing to drive by our blogs–the same way Steve and his wife chose to drive by that restaurant–because they lack curb appeal? We do make assumptions based solely on how a blog looks. Try this test to see how blog curb appeal works for you.

        1. Choose a keyword or search term that you don’t usually look for. It might be something like memory, dragons, or fortune.

        2. Do the search on Google Blog Search, Technorati, or another blog search engine. Keep your search results window handy in case you need to return to it.

        3. Randomly choose 3-5 blogs from the search results.

        4. Without reading a word, rank the blogs in the order you predict they might rank based on linkage from other blogs.

        5. Then do a link search for each blog on Technorati Advanced Search or another blog search engine to get their actual link stats. ( On Technorati–>[Search>Options>Links to This URL] On Others–>[link: domain.com] )

        6. Rank the blogs again based on your findings from the links search.

        7. Compare your prediction to reality. Did your prediction come close?

    Curb appeal changes how we value things. To say it another way. Perception changes reality.

    Granted curb appeal isn’t everything. Curb appeal gets folks in the door. Content keeps them. Even without curb appeal, if you can folks to read quality content, they’ll come back again. Still that doesn’t change the fact that curb appeal makes a HUGE difference in whether a stranger stops to read word one.

    Curb Appeal in the Technorati 100

    In the Technorati Top 100 Blogs, 10 are My Space Blogs. Who says a template blog can’t have curb appeal? Here are three My Space Blogs from the Technorati Top 100 and their link stats as of today.

    Technorati 19 has 16,141 links from 4864 sites.

    Technorati 81 has 6673 links from 2214 sites.

    Technorati 96 has 5792 links from 2290 sites.

    Obviously readers find these blogs have enough curb appeal. Like beauty, curb appeal is in the eye of the beholder. Our blogs need to match what our readers expect to see from a blog like ours. A Disney Blog shouldn’t look like Brooks Brothers or a hiphop blog for that matter. We all have sense what our readers will find confusing or won’t find attractive. Don’t we?

    Steve McKee’s story stuck with me because my decision tree always starts with eliminating the negatives. That way I have fewer choices to work from. I might be missing something spectacular, but I don’t have the time to kiss all of the frogs I’ll meet just to find that spectacular something.

    So many blogs and so little time. Don’t let me drive right by yours, just because I didn’t see the quality on your sign out front. I’m going out to check my sign one more time right now. How’s your sign looking these days?

    –ME “Liz” Strauss

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