 So we're going to talk about a little brand building today, and we're going to mix in a little social media later on But first a little housekeeping. My name is Eric Kuznasek. I am a Wisconsin native lived here about 80% of my life Live in Janesville now was born and raised in the Elkhorn area. So not too far away from here Went to I guess grew up with computers in the household. My parents bought a TI 1994 a back in like 1984 So I was like rockin basic and hooked up to the black and white TV. So when I wanted to watch cartoons I had to undo the computer But it was kind of my foray into I guess what became my career later down the line I went to college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa Which is one of the finest cities in the world if you've never been there And I was drawn there and I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding at all Drawn there largely because in 1994 when I was looking at colleges, they had a Macintosh in every dorm room program So grew up as the son of an educator had a computer in the house went to college and at that time You know, I knew one person in my four years that had their own machine and they brought a PC So different times I got a lot of gray in the beard. I guess I'm one of the older folks in this industry now So for whatever that means When I got to college, I found this thing called the links browser anybody ever developing links text-based. Yeah, good stuff so I just started doing view source and trying to figure out what this whole internet thing was about and Deconstructed and reconstructed some websites Actually went to school for journalism. So did that for a number of years went into the public sector for a while found WordPress in 2010 I guess as part of a volunteer situation I was in Went through a life-altering career change and devastating injury in 2012 Which I won't get into go to hero press calm and look me up if you're interested in that story But that situation basically introduced me to my career now of full-time WordPress and and consulting and all sorts of other It goodness so follow me if you'd like This is a definitely a practice what I say not what I preach talk So if you go out there and you notice big holes in my social media and it's like he said to do this But he's not doing it. Just ignore it. I'm a one-man band So there's only so many hours in the day But if you want to see these slides if you go out to the why the fuss tech one right now Hopefully my slides posted at 2 p.m. Like they were scheduled to and the tweet went out and everything else if it didn't We'll work on that later on Why the fuss tech? So a brand-building I Am not I don't consider myself a branding expert But I've helped others and I've built my own business And I think I've learned a thing or two and I've definitely made some mistakes So I guess that's what this presentation is is kind of a walk through some of the things that I discovered or made those mistakes And how I got around them or how I as a one-man band and able to brand myself as To look at something bigger maybe then than what I am We're gonna talk about core values for your company. We're gonna talk about how to translate that into your social media platform of choice But I will warn you this talk is not about how to use Facebook. What's the best social channel for your particular business? Can I help you with your Facebook page? I those are all things for another topic for another session So the other thing I wanted to say is I usually do this as a two-hour Presentation to a corporate group every year so I've kind of narrowed it down try to get it into 45 50 minutes We're gonna fly through some of the stuff So again the slides are out there and I'll be at the happiness bar afterwards if anybody wants to continue the conversation So and one other thing there's an Easter egg if you go to the slides There's an Easter egg hidden somewhere that I'll just say it's a link that doesn't have anything to do with the presentation If you find that I've got a door prize for you here So first one and actually probably how many ever people find it. I got door prizes. So add a little fun to it. So What is branding and how do you build a brand? Well, it is your corporate DNA or your company DNA or your organization DNA It's who you are. It's why you wake up in the morning. What you're passionate about the image You want to show the world all those things that are kind of I won't say intangible But you can't hold them in your hand and it's not a product that you're trying to sell to somebody So branding and marketing get confused a lot of times marketing is a very tactical Operation where branding is kind of just something you have to do it's intrinsical you do it you do it every day You don't change it. Don't change it radically. I should say and you kind of just build yourself It's it's not an overnight process. It's it's called building a brand for a reason So I went out and this is where I kind of sound like a sixth grade book report According to Miriam Webster's dictionary branding is defined as and so this is what I found an entrepreneur calm and I think it's absolutely wrong personally That it's just a name symbol or design how many people in their business or their organization have a name symbol or design Do you think that you've done a good job branding if you stop there? So this and this is entrepreneur calm. I mean this is you know The source for go-to if you want to start a business So I thought that was kind of odd and I wanted to dig a little bit deeper So this is definitely part of it, but it's not all of it Marketing is actively promoting a product or service as I said you're getting that You're using a message to push your product our widgets are better than their widgets because or our widgets are the best because Or ours are the coolest because that's a marketing tactic Branding as I said a few minutes ago is more intrinsic. It's it's who you are and what you want to portray It should wrap itself around everything you do. So your marketing efforts are definitely influenced by your branding But your branding it's it's like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square They're not always Compatible and they're not always mutually exclusive It's the essential truth branding is your the value of what you're providing your organization your product your service It's your characteristics the values and the attributes of your business that you're communicating out to the public whether it be verbally In print video Just the people that work for you the way they care themselves what they wear how they act how they speak these all all are things that go into branding Branding at the end of the day ultimately Determines whether or not a customer is loyal. I mean what you're trying to do is basically build loyalty build Brand evangelists people that are going to go out there and do your job for you Hey, and my business is called why the fuss technical solution. So go to WTF for your WordPress website He takes the hassle out of it. He's a good communicator. He doesn't speak above your head He'll take the time to walk you through a problem. Those are all things that when I Started my business. I sat around said what do I want people to see me as and that's kind of what I came up with And I didn't I guess realize at the time that I was branding myself, but ultimately that's that's what came out of it If you're someone who's driven Chevy cars your entire life and you see Toyota driving down the street or You go to the lot and one looks good It's probably gonna take you a little bit because you say hey Chevy's this Chevy. I'm used to Toyota's, you know foreign car. I've never driven a foreign car. How does it work differently? So on and so forth But if you have a good experience if you buy that Toyota if they convince you that this is the product for you And then you say hey, wow, this is better. This gets better gas mileage than any Chevy I've ever had in my life. This doesn't break down the tires are better the audio whatever the case is suddenly you've Toyota has gained a Customer for life or a dedicated customer in evangelists that will then go out and say hey I bought a Toyota. Maybe you should buy one too because hey, it's a good car. It's lasted me ten years Never had a problem so on and so forth It's It can go the other way also you can really turn somebody off with your branding and you have to I guess at the end of the day Understand that not everybody is going to buy into your brand But that's why you are marketing to a certain audience. You're trying to find the audience that agrees or that Kind of identifies with your brand and what you're trying to do The other difference I guess or the other thing that why Branding and marketing are different as marketing is an investment You're putting down money for TV commercials Prince ads whatever the case may be But branding is something that you're not necessarily putting down money But it's it's you're spending money and everything you do so the people that you hire the products that you produce the quality of your print materials the Look and feel and the inner interactivity of your website How are those things all tied together? And it turns out both marketing and branding should be something that makes you money in the long run Forgetting that I can do this So how can that strong brand help your company if your price, you know, you have a higher price point You're a luxury store You know people can get a cheaper widget, but they want to go to your store because hey They're brand or they identify with I Identify better with their values at the higher end than at the lower end price isn't as important to me They attract new customers So you don't know who you don't know and you're putting that brand out there And hopefully you're reaching the audience the people that you're trying to reach They help block new competitors or people switching brands going back to the Toyota and versus Chevy example If someone's driven Toyota's their whole life or Chevy is their whole life. It's a difficult switch So Chevy or Toyota might say hey We've got that person because of a B and C why they enjoy our vehicles over the competition Say that kind of segues right into the next one an economic downturn when people aren't spending as much money If you have people who are dedicated and loyal to your brand Suddenly they're still going to spend that money with you when times are tough and when times are good You can hope that they're there and they're being that evangelist and they're pushing into even more And they help you create a bigger footprint. So as I mentioned, I'm a one-man band I can only do so much with the 24 hours in the day But I can make it look through my branding like I might be a bigger agency And then when I am ready to hire employee number one or bring on a partner or whatever the next step is That branding that footprint that infrastructure I put into place Hopefully a seamless and that next person is able to convey the brand and represent the brand Just as well as I've been doing as a one-man show By the way interrupt me if you have questions because otherwise I'll talk all the time and there's a ton here So if we don't get to solve it because we got some good questions, I'm not gonna cry over that This is probably where I'm gonna describe this slide rather than play it because I'm on video And it's copyright if you're familiar with the show Mad Men I Believe and this is an example of how it I kind of Use this to show how Don Draper the main character was more of a branding expert than like an ad man or a marketing man So in this particular scene from the first season There's a group of lucky strike cigarette executives sitting around in the sterling Cooper offices Lamenting the fact that the federal government has said you cannot use our cigarettes are healthier than the competition cigarettes as part of the marketing Right. This is 1958 or something. So things like that definitely happened back then so one of the the other characters Pete Campbell who's kind of a Go-getter or brown-noser wants to be an ad man says hey The government says that we can't say they're healthy But people already know that cigarettes are dangerous just like getting in the car is dangerous because you might get hit and die So let's market it as who cares smoke it away, you know kill yourself and everybody at the table looks very aghast And then Don Draper speaks up and says tell me about your cigarettes Tell me about your process because if your competitors can't say they're healthier than yours or the competitors are being looked at as poison You're being looked at that way too But how can we differentiate your product from the next product and what they came up with if you were watching this clip is it's toasted If you know anything about tobacco, it's all toasted But they made lucky strikes set apart because we care about you because we toast our tobacco. It's a process This is how we make our cigarettes. The other guy just makes poison. We make toasted lucky strike cigarettes So I hope that's a good enough synopsis to show how that's basically a branding decision that we're the healthier cigarette But we're not saying we're healthier. We're toasted It's a great clip. I wish I could show it So then how do you figure out? Before you can even build a brand you have to come up with these core values Like I said When I started my business, I wanted to be known as the guy. He knows what he's talking about. He's cordial friendly doesn't talk Way over your head very technical stuff helps people understand kind of What they're dealing with and if it's a problem that they can't solve themselves that I'm the guy And also my logo is WTF question mark So when I hand out a business card or my truck drives down the street people think it's something else and it's a good conversation starter It works trust me It's the only thing you can't do is drive aggressively instead of the bar till three in the morning because it's right on the side of your vehicle So so anyway a lot of people start to think of their brand before they come up with these core values And it's kind of like putting the cart in front of the horse because how do you know what your values are? How you're gonna brand yourself when you haven't even identified what those values might be So Why does the company need core values? Again, they're part of your DNA. That is who you are what you do how you behave These values are fundamental enduring and actionable meaning that they shouldn't change radically Unless your company changes radically and even then if you've been doing business in a certain way under a certain brand for a certain number of years If anybody's ever tried to do that and pivot to something else completely different But keep the same name and logo and colors Probably doesn't work real well because you've already established yourself. You've established those core values So after this slide, I've got three or four examples of different companies in their core values I've been doing this presentation for three years now, I guess Didn't even go to make sure that those are still their core values didn't look up the website Because if they changed You would know I mean we would know they're large companies And they would have completely shifted away from doing business a certain way into another way So I'm going to assume that those companies are still using the same core values and and very well, they should be This is not a political statement the next thing I'm going to say and I put that in my notes for a reason Corporations when it comes down to our people and that's again not a political statement But what are corporations and what are companies and organizations made up of people human capital? And everybody behaves in a certain way and everybody Carries themselves differently, but when you have a brand if you have that outlier That's a really good way to confuse people and say hey their brand is professional and on time and Quality work. So if you've got somebody who shows up and you know sloppy clothes a half an hour late and gives them something And you know, let's just say a website that doesn't work That is completely contrary to your brand and that's harmful So the human capital you're working with other people you're trying to attract human customers Selling to human people buying from human people. It all goes in to the branding equation because If you're seen as a top-performing company or top-performing Agency staff product, whatever it is Those are things that are Noticeable from a distance You know pull back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz and it's just a guy in a microphone, right? But how many times does that curtain get pulled back on your business as long as you present it again with a unified? Well organized cohesive brand So here we're gonna have I think believe there's three examples of large companies And their core values and these you can go out and find them So like I said, I didn't check this year to make sure they're still the same, but Anybody not know who Google is? So just read through the list. I'm not gonna insult your intelligence by reading through all those but If I didn't have the name up there if I didn't have Google and I said this is a technology company Would you be able to maybe figure out or maybe narrow down what brand what organization this might be? Because everything they do if you just think of whatever Google product It is that comes to your mind think of how these core values might fit in with that For example Gmail, I'm sure that 75% of this room uses Gmail Have you ever thought about some of those core values going into Gmail? Have you ever used an email a web-based email program that's super slow? Do you ever? Let's see Great just isn't good enough. I mean so Gmail is one of those things that you don't have to pay for But they keep putting out new features You know it's something that yeah, they're they're tracking your information. They're advertising to you But there's a pretty robust suite of features available just through the basic Gmail platform that You know Microsoft Outlook charges 100 200 bucks whatever it is per month now So those things are things that Google believes You don't have to do you don't you can make money without doing evil You can be great Not just good fast is better than slow all these things go into all their products Would anybody argue with any of those core that believes that Google operates differently than that? So they've done a pretty good job then is what I would take away from that The next one is Whole Foods You know, it's a supermarket at the end of the day, you know, we all need to shop and cook But if you've ever been in a Whole Foods You can probably go through this list and say yeah, I can totally see how that is their ethos That's how they operate I live in a town in Jamesville where there is not a Whole Foods So I've been to them a handful of times here and there But I would say that all of those things as you go through the list are pretty applicable To to the whole Whole Foods experience Absolutely, and that's you know, I think that's a pretty how many other people have heard that So that's them setting their brand at a premium price point, right? Have you you've been into Whole Foods? I assume then Uh, were you the only one in there at the time? No, so they they've branded themselves at a price point and you know the whole paycheck It's you laugh about it, but uh people still go in there. It's not driving people away It's they've set themselves apart with price with the quality of the products the You know the local sourcing the farm to table their part in that equation that whole thing So this next one I'm always curious to see the reaction because I'm not a fan of the company and I have I would argue with some of their points here. They try But does anybody love flying Southwest Airlines? And why I just out of curiosity, why is that? So there's a local a local reason there is the you know the lack of a You know Midwest Airlines anymore, but you said fun Fun loving attitude is right there on the bottom They don't make their staff flight attendants gate attendants all that stuff. They don't make them It's not a stuffy suit and tie environment You know the fact that they're going to go out of the servants heart one that they're going to go out of their way to Be kind and put others first and proactive customer service Other companies out there that shouldn't be doing that that seems Pretty you know one-on-ones type stuff And you know the desire to be the best All of those are kind of you know, you should be doing those things, but My experiences on Southwest are probably much different than yours. I find it to be a cattle call and Not a big fan. So But this is the way this is what they've established as their core values and whether or not you believe in them Kind of goes back to that Branding are you an evangelist? I mean this gentleman back here is probably more of an evangelist for Southwest Airlines than Most people okay, but but you will stand up in a room of 70 people and say that you love Southwest Airlines So you just kind of Like okay, you prefer it over The next one and just out of curiosity. Why are you uh, uh, what's your attraction to Southwest over American or some other airline? So you have a unique situation with your you have to bring your dog and some airlines And I don't you know, I have a dog that I would love to bring on an airplane, but she's not gonna be a good airplane flyer So you bring your dog some airlines are more accommodating than that are Southwest you've found in your experience to be the most And maybe I need to give Southwest a second look because that's that's a very convincing argument right there from someone who has experience Going through their system And you know, I guess an airline is a good example of you're always going to probably run into Different employees, you know, if you go to the airport once a week on Monday Maybe it's the same lady work in the counter every time But you're flying into one airport out of another So you're experiencing different people all with kind of the same attitude and that's goes back again to their fun loving attitude They're displaying or their servants heart So it sounds to me like your experience lines up well with their what they've established as their core values So excellent and and there's you know, there's a difference right here of branding So their branding doesn't appeal to me. I'm sorry. I forgot your name. I saw your Speech earlier miss Rachel Rachel has had great experiences. She is probably the event and like she said is the evangelist. So Either way, uh, not everybody's going to fly Southwest so To each his own So now we're getting to the good part the social media part And uh, so we've talked about core values as you go through that and set up what you believe in how you want to act How you present yourself? How do you then take that and translate it into the interwebs putting it out there for the world to see yes, sir So if people didn't hear that it's how do you determine your core values when you're starting from scratch essentially Sure. Um, I guess a lot of Brainstorming so again, I'm a one-man band, but if you're part of a team you sit down you brainstorm Who are we what are we doing here? What are we doing now? Or what do we you know, what are we doing currently if you're in business versus? What do we want to be doing or if you're just a startup? How do we want to make our splash? How do we want to present ourselves to the world and there's a lot of Soul searching and again. I'm one person so it's easy for me to soul search I can't search your soul So in a team, I guess it's more of a collaborative effort of saying here's what I believe And if it's a team of four people go around the room and say here's what I believe and kind of do your Venn diagram Or your SWAT analysis or however you want to do it to kind of figure out where the everything you know people's beliefs overlap and then For lack of a better term fight it out if there's you know if you got hey We want to be the lowest price and we want to be the highest price Your team probably is never going to be able to be like have a cohesive brand because you've got those differing opinions So you at least got to get on the same page. Is that yeah answer your question? So Yes, sir Sure I mean so could you as a new company could you say we want to be the lowest price point but also the best customer service? Sure, and if that's the way you want to brand yourself It might be difficult because you know you're charging people less than maybe what your competitors are Which means you can put less money into research and development of your products Into marketing of your products into paying your employees So who here wants to make less than they're making today? You know so paying people again the human capital part when you pay people well And you pay for the talent that you want That's going to help benefit your brand if you're looking for that top talent if you're looking for any bum warm body off the street You know you're not going to be able to find the lowest price and the best customer service because that person Who's working for seven 25 an hour or whatever minimum wages now is probably not Doesn't have the soft skills the formal education the training whatever the case might be Any other questions before I this is a good point to kind of pivot So if there's we're good to move on So, um, how do you do it? How do you take all of these core values that list of 10 things that google Believes in how do you take that and translate that to social media? Well, first we have to figure out what social media isn't because it is a lot of things But I think it isn't a lot more and social media If anybody believes that it's gotten smaller in the past year and we'll get smaller in the coming years You should probably take another look at things So, uh, when you're whether you're a new business, uh, you're launching a new product you're Pivoting what your offerings are you need brand awareness out there, right? And you need brand awareness whether you're marketing to consumers or to businesses or to both or to whoever So when two thirds 70 percent whatever the number is now of internet users have some sort of social media account And that's where people are gathering online or gathering in general That's the place to get brand awareness Uh, 40 years ago you might have put an ad full page ad in the sunday paper because you knew that everybody was getting that On their doorstep after church looking through it, um, you know clipping things to save because there was no internet There was no um save it for later insta paper type things Um, so when you go online and and you're you're looking at these social channels again, whichever ones are best for your business Um, they're vital for getting that brand awareness for getting that recognition of who you are What you're doing what your brand is so Here are all the things that social media isn't uh myths and fallacies It's inexpensive Has anybody uh, you know those of you who have a facebook page for your business Is the best strategy that you found just post stuff out there without boosting it without really any Strategy and just seeing what sticks and what is popular and what people react to You don't get too far doing it that way because facebook is a business and they want money and you know their exchange of money For services is we're going to expose your message to more people So if you think that you can get out there and just hey for free We're going to create a twitter account an instagram account a snapchat account Everything under the sun and we're going to put messages out there and our brand and our business is just going to take off I I don't think it works that way. Um, not in my and if it does work that way somebody needs to retrain me and Do it Um and Segue weighing very quickly into the next one that social media is fast that hey if we create an instagram account today Suddenly that's the end of our problems. That's you know solves everything. We need to do Not going to work. Um, it takes a long time to develop a voice develop a following Um to figure out, you know best times to post best times not to post Best times to post very aggressive marketing messages best times to post Hey, it's monday. Everybody hates monday's right, you know, like, um, there's certain types of things That you can do to build that audience. Um, and it takes time, you know, you start with one follower You know this whole social multiplier effect Takes takes hold. Um, hopefully you have a hundred followers, uh, and then a thousand followers But it doesn't happen overnight and don't ever go on twitter and or don't ever go on google and say buy twitter followers You know and all that don't try to artificially inflate your following counts because um not going to help you out at all Fake accounts don't do anything for you There are people that believe social media is just viral marketing That hey, i'm going to create this video of me falling down the stairs and daniel tosh is going to pick it up Put it on his show. It's going to have eight million views. Um, does anybody heard of over the summer? It's been a couple months now and actually he just broke both of his legs So i don't think he'll be doing it anymore. Uh, the laguna beach jumper out in california Uh guy, you know late 20s, uh working as a waiter or whatever just decided hey screw this I'm going to go do what i want to do and what i want to do is create youtube videos of me jumping off balconies into the ocean And it worked for about a month two months And then he jumped off something and broke his legs and uh, he made four thousand dollars for all these millions of views that he got So as medical bills, i'm just going to guess as someone who's broken a femur before medical bills are more than four grand in that case So, um, don't create your so don't go out on social media thinking that you're going to go viral And that's going to be the the key to your happiness and the key to your success because There's a big downside of going viral too, but forcing something to go viral is is not the way to go Um Hey social media results can't be measured right Yes, they can and it just gets better and better and better. Um in terms of being a marketer or a business owner Um The i'm a big analogy guy Again, i i don't want to talk above my customers heads and i deal with a lot of small businesses who they have no idea What a website how it even works. They just know that they need one um I live in janesville, which is just north of beloit and i use the analogy Hey, if you have a hamburger stand in janesville, uh, and you want to put up a billboard on the side of i 90 The advertising company can tell you how many cars go by there every day, you know How many between this time how many between that time? Which is great because hey 100,000 cars every day. That's 200,000 eyeballs at least, um, you know, that's that's a lot of eyes But what they can't tell you is what time of day they're driving by if they're hungry if they like hamburgers If they had a hamburger yesterday for lunch, you know all these things that a billboard is static It doesn't change It's there and if you buy a billboard for a month and after a week you're not getting the results You think you should be getting try calling the advertising company saying yank it down. I want my money back They're going to say you signed a 30 day 60 day whatever contract. It's going to stay there and we're going to keep your money With social media you can try something As much as you want as little as you want you can change it whenever you want You can put a campaign out there and if it's working you can continue add more money to it You can stop at any point. You can change your message I believe on the other side of the wall. There's an ab split test talk going on Which is essentially what this is is figure out what people respond to and what they don't respond to and go with the More popular message But all you can measure all of that Using facebook ads using twitter ads instagram I haven't done a whole lot on snapchat Because i'm almost 40 and I don't understand it quite honestly And I don't have kids so no one can explain it to me So you can definitely measure your results and and you know a couple years ago Social media results couldn't be necessarily translated into sales through your website if you're doing e-commerce But now um google analytics does that and all these other analytics programs I can tell you someone left you know using your facebook pixel somebody Took your ad clicked on your ad went to your website Browsed for however long bought five products. They exited that funnel. There's a conversion for you I mean that's measurable results. Um that return on investment. Uh, it's all right there Whereas again the static billboard on the side of the freeway is going to cost you a thousand bucks for a month Hope you made a thousand and one dollar. So it was worth it And the last one being oh, I'm sorry. It's second to last one social media is optional Does anybody think that if you're starting a business today, you shouldn't have a presence on social media at all It's pretty self-explanatory. It's it's not getting any smaller. It's it's getting larger And social media is hard. Well, I can't do it because it's so hard. No, it's not hard Anybody can go on there and create a facebook page and you know, there's tutorials left and right on If you google it, but it's complicated. It's complex. It's um, it's a lot of Looking at your analytics looking at your data Figuring out who your followers are where they come from. What time they're online Why they like your brand versus your competitor? There's a lot of science that goes into it and um People who are much smarter than me with statistics have figured out ways to make it digestible But it's still a very complicated process and that's why there's people out there who are social media managers Because the business owner has no idea why facebook is a better channel for them than twitter But they'll hire somebody and pay somebody to do that. So it's created this whole industry of people Who understand this and again, i'm not an expert. They understand it much better than I But you as the business owner you as the the the freelancer or the consultant working with a client You can help them understand it using some of these tools, but it's still complex. It's still it's not easy So now that we've talked about all the things that social media isn't Let's talk about how to take those core values and and some of those things we talked about earlier And translate them into whatever channel it is that you're using And i'm probably going to go pretty quick here because I got 10 minutes or so And I want to leave some time for questions. So and this is from the canva.com design school blog If you haven't heard of canva. It's a great tool to help you brand to create consistent images To make facebook banners all that stuff you go on there and they do have a paid account But there's a lot that you can get for free. So um, this is from their blog And they're you know, each one is pretty long. I just broke it down into some pretty simple messages here consistency Use the same font You know if it's a website use the same font families on your website as you do on your Your social media banners or your print ads or what have you colors Routine come up with a schedule. So if you're going to post every monday morning Stick to that so people that are following you and post more than once a week. I guess is what I should also say But do it at a time So again, look at your data. When are people visiting your site? When are they liking your posts? And use that to your advantage come up with a style guide of how you want to talk because Especially if you're a small business that's growing or you're a non-profit that there's volunteers that kind of filter in and out People come in and they don't know, you know, they don't do a lot of research into what has happened before them They just know that starting now. This is my job. So give them a guide hand the new guy who's replacing you a Document that says here's how we do it. Here's the colors we use Here's what we don't do Put all those things in writing and and go back to that and you don't need to alter it dramatically But just make sure that it's current that's fitting your needs Because the style guide should be a living breathing Document i'm a former newspaper reporter and if anybody else has ever used the ap style book It changes, you know, not drastically but here and there it changes and you got to keep up with it Because I had an editor that when you would make an ap style mistake would take you out to the woodshed for it So I you had to learn that thing Second one and Should have explained this at the beginning of the speech but the numbers up there are just for your reference. They're slide numbers It's not no. This isn't tip number 18. It's slide number 18. Sorry So I can just write in your notes It's slide 18 that you want to ask a question about or go back to so strong logos are always a good thing again Mine is wtf question mark and you know I have why the fuss technical solutions and very small writing below it So you got to get pretty close to know that it's not The other thing that wtf might stand for And also visual logos a lot of times have hidden meanings in them And actually if you click on that image in the slides, you'll go to a list of 10 of them And just one example is the fedex logo. Does anybody know what that The little hidden thing in there with the arrow To make sure or to show you that they're fast that they're going to take it from point a to point b And they're the ones to do it. Just little hidden things like that So there's some other examples in that blog post that are interesting that you may not have realized What you've been looking at all these years is actually a subliminal message colors Use consistent colors first of all and use don't use a bright red background with bright yellow text because First of all, it looks like mcdonald's second of all. You can't read it Third of all people who have need to use screen readers and assistive devices. That's high contrast things aren't great But then also use and I know that color wheel is a little bit small up there, but certain colors Present certain feelings and and people identify certain feelings with those colors And I don't know if anybody can see what blue is up there on the wheel But there's a very uh, I used blue as the dominant color in this presentation for a reason Blue is trust and so hopefully y'all trust me at what I'm saying because if I'm blowing smoke You're going to walk out of here and uh rate me poorly on the survey But um, it's a it's a trust thing. It's hey, I I know what I'm talking about I'm going to use this color to kind of underlie that Voice and style again. This goes back to in your style guide. How are you going to talk to people? How are you going to respond to your your customers or people with complaints? Um You know, there's a lot of mistakes out there case studies on ways people have reacted to different situations Um, one of them, which is not the actual company doing it But if you recall target a year or two years ago, maybe so that all their bathrooms are going to be For both genders, you know, they're not going to put male or female on them anymore and uh people Had a fit as you know online people have a fit about just about everything Um and somebody created a customer service Facebook account with the little target bullseye logo And started responding to these people uh on the target page who are complaining about this policy change And it you know, it got picked up really quickly because a half the people thought it was target, uh, given them like a You know smart ass response to you know, their their comment Um, but the other part of it is target didn't take those posts down They kind of said this guy whoever's doing it in the background is understanding what we're trying to do here And yeah, he might be a little crude making these comments, but as long as he stays within our our guidelines, he's all right and it kind of Um It made target look good because they weren't just deleting that off the face of the earth So they allowed someone else to use their style of voice because it agreed with them Um, which I guess for a big company you I you can't think of too many search situations where they allow that to happen Um, so I've always thought that was a pretty cool thing Because honestly some of the things people get bent out of shape about online and I'm not making a comment about that case in particular But people get bent out of shape because the sun didn't come up this morning. So Kudos to target for for letting that go And I guess the three things that I wanted to mention if I didn't already because I have my list here tone language and purpose How are you talking to them? What sort of language are you using and what is the why you're responding to this person? Why are you putting this post out there? Have it make it have a purpose Be a human You guys are probably already all seen Twitter accounts facebook accounts that are basically auto generated You know, you get a twitter follower some beautiful young girl is following me on twitter now all of a sudden out of the blue that I don't know And all she's tweeting is non sequiturs, you know all this gibberish nonsense with every once in a while. There's a link That's a bot, you know, and nobody wants to follow that you can't interact with that So be a human Understand that you're talking to other humans going back to companies and corporations are Humans people because you if you talk to someone like a human being they'll generally respond like a human being unless they're I'm not going to go down that road right now. I'm not going to make that comment So, you know and part of being a human is not using your corporate speak So most of us are wordpress developers designers Affiction autos whatever you want to call it. We can get pretty deep into functions and php and javascript and all these different terms That the average person they may have heard but they probably don't understand So again going back to my personal brand. I try to talk to people at a eye to eye level not up here So talk to them like a human and You know make them feel like you Are having a conversation with them not talking at them Limit your plugs I'm sure we all follow social media accounts where it's just buy this buy this buy this buy this buy this every day It's not the best thing to do. Customers want two-way communication. They don't always want to hear your sales pitch They want to hear about other things. They want to be able to ask questions and get human responses and not just corporate speak Tell stories Anybody know who Chris Lemma is Anybody heard him speak he tells stories and he's fantastic at it Tell your story. Don't just post. Um, hey, we just put out a brand new widget It's the greatest widget ever talk about maybe why you put it out or how it came to be or why you saw this product Or hey, here's a customer who we bought our widget and really benefited. Um, it's a testimonial Again, that's that's your evangelist doing your work for you. You're just putting it out there in the form of a Story on your blog or on your social media Or wherever you'd like transparency and the reason the mcdonald's sign is up there is in 2012 the whole pink slime Ground beef situation mcdonald's got accused of hey, you know, you're using pink slime So mcdonald's canada, which is different than mcdonald's us said. No, we don't let's show people how we make our burgers Let's show people how we make our french fries all that stuff So they started doing these videos Putting it up there ask mcdonald's q&a type things on youtube and you can still go out there Actually, I think if you click that link in the slides, it'll take you to the page Where they have a lot of those videos archived, but it worked very well There's case studies out there that showed that consumer loyalty And dedication to the mcdonald's brand grew after that because it wasn't just Oh fast food junk food, whatever they were showing that they sourced their potatoes from Whatever farmer in manitoba And we're able to walk people through the process now Does it mean mcdonald's is the greatest food ever that it's not unhealthy? No But at least they're pulling back that curtain on the Wizard of Oz rather than saying no We don't use pink slime period and a story. They showed people They proved or showed people how they were doing their Creation of their burgers rather than taking the lowest common denominator and dumping ammonia on it and then pressing it out into a Patty so And mcdonald's usa actually picked up this program and did it a couple years later because it was so successful in canada Be relevant You guys like going on facebook and seeing this you'll read more little link And then you do that and then it says continue reading and then you go to another window where it's like this long And that's great if you're a journalist and you got something to say But as a company keep your messages short because you know how people go through facebook Or twitter It's this it's just going through it until something catches your attention. So Don't take your time posting a thousand words on facebook. Uh, keep it short. Keep it sweet Keep it to what people want to hear and what they're interested in And use visuals. Uh, and that went up there I wish it was larger because that can put you in a trance. Uh, but again when people are scrolling through Kill in time, they're looking mostly for visuals. They're not stopping to see what everybody typed out They're looking for pictures that catch their eye videos. Um, so use those sorts of things to your advantage Even if they're just pictures, uh, you know people using your products It's better than just a text post that says we're the best because we're the best Show why you're the best show somebody using your product and having a great day or Great meal or whatever it is you're selling. Um visuals are very important Wow, I got a minute to spare. Um, so thank you to and this is just some of the resources that I use when making this Thank you again to the word camp, uh, walk shop organizers And there's my information. I'll be at the happiness bar. Um, I can probably take a question or two How would you help customers set budgets? I say, what's your budget for this? And they say $300 and I say that's not going to cut it. No, um One of the earlier sessions that I attended talked a little bit about Setting expectations and I think that's the key is sitting down and saying here's what I can do for you So if I'm not the guy to run your facebook account, I'm not gonna if they say, hey, would you run our facebook account? I'm not going to say well, maybe you know, no, I'm not going to do it. Here's the expectations But here you want to do abc and d here's what I would charge If you don't have the budget, uh, can you take out c and we can reduce that number a little bit? Sure No, that's an essential part. Well, then the budget needs to be increased And I guess the the stock answer is every situation is different anything else. Oh, yeah I would say that there there's a situation where that would definitely be So you're a caregiver. You're someone that goes in, you know hospice your hospice organization Um, you need to be very personal in that respect if you are, uh Cleaning out porta potties. You probably don't have to get real personal with that, you know And I'm not being a smart ass. That's just, you know, there's certain situations where it's appropriate and there's certain situations where it's not I would say it's a pretty good equation pretty good ratio. Um, you know, again some situations it might be Uh, 10 to 1, you know, because you know that you have a very dedicated audience And that you don't have to keep marketing out to them because they're already Brand evangelists. Um, but there may be some situations where you don't want to put all the fluff out there You just need to get down to brass tax. And so again, it's kind of You know, I don't think that there's a so I always say that they're practicing medicine not Perfecting it and so I think that's a lot of what social media is you're practicing and if something doesn't work It's easy to try something different So I think I got to wrap it up here again If you want to come to the happiness bar and chat for the next hour or two, I'll be in there Otherwise, thank you for listening