Let’s Dance
I am so exhausted from this election that I can’t write this week. Instead, I am listening to music. Dance with me!
About Talia Whyte
Posts by Talia Whyte:
Back To Local Politics
With the presidential election behind us, it’s time for the country to refocus their energies on local politics. It was fun, but exhausting to follow this year’s election. However, most Americans don’t realize that their locally elected politicians have a great affect on their everyday quality of life than anybody in Washington.
This looks like a great movie to check out.
No, Email Is Not Dead
Social media has drastically changed the way individuals and organizations communicate with each other. However, most recent statistics show that not only emails for internal communications still alive, but it is also evolving.
According to a Harvard Business Review survey using 2,600 workers, email is still considered “the most effective collaborative tool.” Only 22 percent of respondents would like to see email “adopt a more social construction, using self-selected ‘followers’ and ‘friends.’” Yes, it is true that most email is spam these days; however, half of the respondents use their email as an online file storage system, a manager’s accountability source, and a document courier.
Additionally, eight out of ten mobile users check and send emails with their devices. Over half of workers use their mobiles to check upon waking up from sleep in the morning or immediately after getting dressed for work. That’s dedication!
As far as external communications are concerned, having a social media strategy is a great plan to have, especially if you are looking to expand your organizational brand and attract more supporters. President Barack Obama set up a new standard of using social media to reach the masses and get elected in 2008. But for all the social media work the Obama for America campaign did in 2012, did you know that his campaign raised US$690 million from email marketing alone?
From Businessweek:
…The campaign would test multiple drafts and subject lines—often as many as 18 variations—before picking a winner to blast out to tens of millions of subscribers. “When we saw something that really moved the dial, we would adopt it,” says Toby Fallsgraff, the campaign’s e-mail director, who oversaw a staff of 20 writers… “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your inbox from other people. ‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.” …Another unexpected hit: profanity. Dropping in mild curse words such as “Hell yeah, I like Obamacare” got big clicks. But these triumphs were fleeting. There was no such thing as the perfect e-mail; every breakthrough had a shelf life… Fortunately for Obama and all political campaigns that will follow, the tests did yield one major counterintuitive insight: Most people have a nearly limitless capacity for e-mail and won’t unsubscribe no matter how many they’re sent. “In the end, we had 18 or 20 writers going at this stuff for as many hours a day as they could stay awake,” says Fallsgraff. “The data didn’t show any negative consequences to sending more.”…
So there you have it. Of course, technology trends are always changing, and email could eventually become a digital casualty to whatever those new trends are. Nonetheless, email is here to stay (for now).
Upgrade Your Brand Standard Guide
Brand standard guides used to be things only big, Fortune 500 corporations would create for their brand. But now with the proliferation and accessibility of marketing tools today, small businesses are also expected to maintain a brand identity. This is especially helpful for any vendors you employ, including graphic and web designers, product developers, and other marketing and sales professionals, to better understand how to use your brand.
Before we start, let’s define what a brand identity standards guide is for those who don’t know. A brand standard or style guide is a set of instructions that let others know how to use your brand identity, and, thus, create consistency with how your brand is viewed by others. The guide will provide instructions on how to use your logo, colors, layouts, images, and typography in a variety of media, such as package design, stationery, social media, website, email, banners, etc.
A standard guide can be in any format, including a PDF file that can either be downloaded from a website or printed or a dedicated brand standards page on your website. You should choose a format that is easy to update, as your brand standards may change regularly.
Depending on the type of business you run and who your client base is, the size of your standards guide could vary from a couple of pages to dozens of pages. All standards guides should at least have the following components:
- Introduction: Tell users the general purpose of the guide
- Organizational MIssion: What does your organization stand for and why you selected this brand identity.
- Logo: What you can and can’t do with it and what’s acceptable. Show the logo in both color and black and white. Should there be a clearance space around the logo? What are the dimension restrictions?
- Color Palette: What are the official colors your company uses to represent its brand? Show the actual color(s) in RGB, CMYK, and Pantone.
- Typography: Show the entire alphabet, numbers, and other special characters in the font(s) that your organization uses.
- Images: Show examples of photos that are acceptable and show specific styles. Be specific about what images are not acceptable.
- Copy: What type of copy or text is acceptable to express your brand?
Again, this is a very basic explanation of a standards guide, and every company has a different approach to using one. This is a great time to create a standards guide to start your organization off on the right foot! For more information on creating a brand standards guide for your organization, contact my company.