Designated Editor Blog | Demystifying search, social, strategy, tactics

Brand identity: Piece together your mosiac

Brand identity isn’t simply a logo and slogan: Factors and tips for building your brand

By Alexandra Smith

Put away your iron and get out your creativity. Branding is no longer a single searing process of creating an identity, but an arrangement of many factors, a mosaic.

At Podcamp 5 Boston, Tamsen McMahon, of Sametz Associates and Brass Tack Thinking, makes branding clear, similar to a mosaic piece of art. McMahon dubs it “Mosaic Branding”

Brands are

A Vision
A Subject
An Audience
Material
Style
Resolution
- A Mosaic: Many factors carefully positioned to best represent the image you want to portray.

Brands are not

Logos
Messages
Public relations

A brand exists in consumers’ minds.

Brands answer the question: What are we about?

The answer must be abundantly clear: It’s what you represent.

Brand creation tips

Location: Where you are located has a lot to do with how you present yourself.
Audience: If you don’t know who your audience is, you know nothing about your brand. Understand all reasons why people find value in you.
Material: Own your logo, custom labels, tagline, and type.
Resolution: You must create clarity with your audience. The more pieces you put into your picture, the clearer it will be.
Consultation: You can get more information by talking to less people than more, as long as each of those people represents different stakeholder groups.
Be prepared: Be ready for something to go wrong. Own negative press. Consistently deliver pieces to your audience, so that when something goes wrong, you still have what you worked to put together.
It’s about context: Move your brand to a culture of creation. Instead of focusing on controlling individual content, focus on the context in which it is understood — the mosaic.

Start sharpening your tools and use all of the above supplies to create a brand that people will care about.

Content Marketing pioneer Pulizzi predicts rising demand for content strategists

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‘Get Content Get Customers’ author and Content Marketing pioneer Pulizzi presents in Cambridge

Content strategists, content managers, and content marketers: Great opportunities are here and forthcoming in the content marketing industry, according to Get Content Get Customers author Joe Pulizzi, who spoke at HubSpot‘s Cambridge offices. Hosted by Content Strategy New England Meetup, Pulizzi offered his assessment of and forecast for the content marketing — aka content strategy — field.

Current Content Marketing Concepts

Brands are publishers today
- Companies like IBM and Oracle are creating the most content in the world.
- Content is at the center of social media, SEO (search engine optimization), and lead generation.
- On average 26% of marketing budgets are allocated to content marketing.*
  - content marketing budgets are expected to increase 51% over the next 12 months. *
- Brands’ contact marketing usage by tactic:*
  - 79% social media (excluding blogs)
  - 78% post articles
  - 61% eNewsletters
  - 51% blog
- Survey: Marketers report their efforts are ineffective *
  - 70% say social media lacks effectiveness
  - 60% say blogs lack effectiveness
  - 54% say article posting lacks effectiveness
  - 44% say webinars lacks effectiveness

*According to Junta41’s 2010 Content Marketing Benchmarks survey

The BIGGEST content marketing challenge is Producing Engaging Content

Not far behind, content marketers are also challenged by

Producing enough content
Budget issues
Lack of C-suite buy-in

Content Marketing Tips

Keep in mind marketers are also publishers, so enhance your content to attract and retain more customers. Content has to solve customers’ problems more than anyone else and meet your brand objectives.

If you are creating content as a part of your marketing tool, make it the best
- Best your competition
Focus on how to get your content created & then leverage it to create engagement and encourage behavior across multiple platforms.
Ask yourself
- What’s your editorial mission?
- What are your objectives?

If you’re making everyone happy with your content, you probably are not doing it right: It’s likely too safe and not compelling.

Content has to be consistently compelling
Less content can be more
Have a managing editor to hone and leverage your in-house content

Content Marketing vs. Content Strategy

Content Strategy: The plan for how we “create, deliver & govern content” (Kristina Halvorson)
- More of an internal process focus
Content Marketing: How we take the plan and leverage it to attract and retain customers
- More of an external action-oriented focus

Google Instant: Stick to your SEO toolkit say SEMPO pros

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By Alexandra Smith

SEMPO pros see no SEO impact from Google Instant yet …

Professionals at SEMPO Boston’s event “Keeping up with Google Search” discussed implementation of Google Instant, and noted minimal impact on search behavior, and thus, any effect on driving traffic.

Consensus: Google Instant not impacting search rankings … but

Will Google Instant alter user behavior by diverting a searcher from his intended search phrase?
Will this impact search engine optimization and pay per click advertising?

At the 6-week mark since the launch of Instant, there has been no measurable impact on search engine optimization or on PPC.

Some professionals expressed that Instant has changed their level of engagement. Others feel it has affected their behavior as search users – they end up somewhere other than intended.

Out of the dozens of professionals present, only a few had elected to turn off Google Instant on their searches. One user commented that Instant causes more short-tail and that there is more effort needed to make web content searchable with fewer terms.

Google Instant assessment by SEMPO professionals

Algorithm changes and implementations such as Instant are what keep SEO agencies in business.
Instant has caused frenzy among SEO practitioners who worry about effects on search rankings.
Agencies need to keep up with changes that could potentially impact search, such as Instant to ease clients’ concerns.
As always, make sure your content is tagged – this will make it less vulnerable overall.
Instant is currently not applied when using a browser search bar or a mobile device, but watch out for when it goes mobile.
Instant is making search easier for the user.

Overall, the consensus among professionals is that Google Instant makes search easier for the user, but that it has not measurably impacted user behavior either in SEO or PPC.

Employ core search marketing best practices

Information needs to be tagged appropriately and efficiently.
Social media sites need to link back to product pages.
Press releases and video must be a part of web strategy.

Share your insights

Do search marketers overreact to algorithm changes?
Have you altered your tactics since Google Instant?