Try thinking about a few of these key points:
(1) Where do you see clients feeling the greatest cognitive dissonance with your brand and process?

(2) Where do your clients feel the most connected with the experience you’re delivering?

(3) Are you structuring your communication to make your clients an integral part of projects?

(4) What are the most common emotions associated with your projects upon completion? Let’s go back to what may be the most important focal point, the dissonance.

Where are the biggest disconnects with your clients?
We’ve all been in situations where things turn out well in the end, but in the thick of it there seems to be a fair number of misfires. Shaw suggests a simple solution for this. Creatively ‘mindmap’ your process and identify the ‘pain points’ where customers feel disconnected. More times than not, you’ll identify areas where clients feel left out, having unanswered questions, and negative emotions toward your brand. While these feelings may not always occur, when they do, make sure to take note and plot them on your mindmap. As service providers we can’t expect our clients to understand all the small details, and it’s not their responsibility to. Instead, we should do our part to recognize signs of confusion and frustration, and do what we can to help foster understanding and positive emotions. The more aware we are of these areas, the less likely they are to happen, and the better prepared we are to handle them when they come up.

Where do clients find the most value in your process?
It’s equally important to note the times where excitement and positive emotion run high within your process. How come? People enjoy feeling connected and knowing they can have influence in the decisions being made. This is especially true for those who are highly invested in the success of a project. Increasing a customer’s perceived value and awareness of their ability to contribute will positively affect their overall outlook. Rather than using a linear model of providing value to your clients, think about what their expectations of value are and what you can do to increase that value. Taking it a step further, think about what customers desire from your brand and pinpoint areas that can deliver value above their general expectations. Delivering in these previously unidentified areas becomes easier because there was little expectation to begin with, but there is great potential to affect the perceived value.

Structure communication to have one, cohesive voice
Reflect on how your communication makes others feel, and how that in turn pushes them to react to what you say. Take a simple example Shaw used: the pens at your local bank. More times than not, these pens are chained to a desk. What kind of message is this sending to their customers? Do they anticipate their customers are planning on stealing them? You may not equate the communication you have on a daily basis to pens at a bank, but in many cases the ways we choose to correspond can have a similar effect. Service providers should structure these messages in ways that ensure the trust and appreciation they have for clients is understood. This idea operates on a more subconscious level, but in facing facts, we find more times than not our subconscious governs how well we ‘play with others.’

How do your clients feel when a project has ended?
The ‘peak end rule’ shows us that we should look at our process and design it in ways that leave our customers with positive emotions when things come to a close. Admittedly, this is not an easy thing to do. At times things become skewed, communication lacks, and a project is left feeling abandoned. What can we do to change this perception and give our clients what they ultimately need and are looking for? Rather than focusing strictly on the product or service we deliver, we can alter our focus to think about the emotion surrounding the end of a project. Do clients leave feeling valued and pleased or disappointed and neglected? Completely separate from the end product, we should pay attention to our client’s emotional levels. If customers feel as though they’re being supported and cared for, they are more likely to consider interacting with the brand that delivered those emotions in the future. Ultimately, this helps to facilitate the mindset of a long-term partnership. And, really, shouldn’t that be the end goal?

Let’s think outside of digital parameters to define the term. Take a 14 year old girl. Her father asks her to take out the garbage every Thursday night. She moans and groans, even though she knows it’s coming every week, and she is absolutely aggravated that she has to leave her favorite TV episode or halt her texting to take out the trash.

Sure, Why Not Press The Button?
You’re an avid user of Twitter and you’re pushing 2,000 friends on Facebook. You check the box and watch while the application computes your social status. It comes back with a score of 35 out of 100 and offers $5 off your purchase if you share your new buy with friends on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Decisions, decisions. Do you share your purchase with everyone you know? That’s pretty annoying. If you only share it with your “shopping circle” on Google+, you get $1.50 off. Is it even worth it?

You press the button. The price for the garment drops $1.50 and your transaction is complete. You casually show your on-screen receipt as you pass by the employee at the door. He offers you a bag, and you accept. The clothing brand just paid $1.50 to blast your inner circle with some free marketing. Well, not free, but for a lot less than it would cost to reach the same amount of people with an ad in a magazine or an online ad campaign, and hopefully with more credibility.

It’s Already Begun…
For those of you tech types and marketers who are aggressively driving the engine into this future of purchasing, good for you. Klout, for example is making noise with their social status ranking, the Klout Score. If you go to Klout.com and connect your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, they’ll give you a score and attempt to tell you what topics you’re considered “influential” in. On top of that, they’re already working with businesses to identify top influencers to offer them perks. An interesting example is the promotion of Stephen King’s new book Mile 81, where based on your Klout score, readers receive a free e-book download in exchange for Tweeting out the promotion and the book.

Take this a step further in the future. Imagine every product, every restaurant and every event you’re interested in calculates your social score as you walk through the door. If you want to get in, you better tell your friends you’re at the club. If you want to get in without a door charge, you better have a high social status.

There Are Some Concerns…
There are a few major problems with the future of shopping, as it pertains to social status and buying, and why it may run into some serious push-back. Giving discounts as an incentive to share a purchase on Facebook promotes biased brand advertising (what many would consider social media garbage) jamming up your feed. If your Facebook feed is full of “I bought this and that”, you’re going to stop trusting your friends.

Another problem is the rich and influential get the price breaks while the poor and tech-illiterate don’t get the deal. It accentuates the disparity between the social class that buys every new iteration of the iPhone and the everyday cell phone user that has never heard of a data plan or downloaded a mobile app. But do these people shop at Banana Republic or Victoria Secret anyhow, and do they even exist in 2015? Sure they do. Only 27% of US mobile phones are currently smartphones (according to comScore’s 2010 Mobile Year In Review report). Globally, only 1 of 5 people own smartphones. But, what will that number look like in 2015 and what percentage of people will use their smartphones to browse and buy on a daily basis? Assuming smartphone growth continues at it’s current rapid pace, by 2015 there will be a new value put on each customer, and these brands (the smart ones, anyway) will achieve as much social publicity as they can get from their socially-savvy consumers.

The Truth Is…
If you aren’t carrying an expensive smart phone and aren’t spending time on the social web, people still care about you. You will simply become less and less valuable in the eyes of your favorite brands and will be penalized, paying top dollar for their products. It’s high school all over again. Lady Gaga gets paid thousands for an endorsed tweet. You get nothing…unless you’re one of the cool kids (based on your calculated online social ranking) of course.

This article was originally published in Philly Ad News

1. Create a memorable brand identity and a strong voice to go with it (sorry all you product-centric folks out there, you’re generic without it).

2. Create a Facebook fan page and experiment with Facebook ad campaigns. You might be surprised at how quickly your following will grow. Just make sure you’re staying active with quality content, offers, and conversations. Each Facebook fan is valuable.

3. Get your product in the hands of people who want you to succeed and will talk to everyone they know, even if they don’t pay you a cent.

4. Find someone willing to write about you, then give them a reason to. Warby Parker got their start this way.

5. Make product returns as easy for your customers as possible to eliminate risk for the customer. Piperlime does this really well, and so does Gilt.

6. Go beyond the “browse and buy” mentality and integrate social tools to allow your customers to ask their friends’ opinions, share their purchases, and “like” your brand. Reward them for doing it, too.

7. Keep your website and customer experience slick, simple and extremely usable.

8. Pay attention to analytics. Focus on improving every page/click and converting every visitor.

9. Focus on CRM integration as early on as possible to organize customer accounts, email subscribers, purchase history and analytics from one central location. A few years from now you’ll be very happy you did.

Do you have other tips to contribute? Comment…

It got me thinking about something that plagues all creative agencies.

Even if you don’t read the article, you can tell by the title, that I’m inclined to agree with its conclusion. Biased as I may be, the article brings up a great point. It’s something that we as an agency run into a lot, but it’s something that if properly addressed, would likely make all marketers and agencies much happier.

A Quick Note
For the purposes of this article, I’m sticking to the terminology from the Ad Age article. A marketer is any business that hires an agency. An agency is a group like us, whether it’s web design, print design, advertising, marketing, or anything else. The agency is hired to do creative work for the marketer.

Back to the Issue at Hand
The issue is communication when starting a campaign or project. When you quote a project, you square away its main objectives. You talk about campaign or project goals. You figure out a scope of work- how difficult, how time-consuming, how costly. The problem is that this process is usually led by the business people within an agency and the business-minded marketers. These personalities are great with the big picture, and hopefully they have the experience and expertise to kick off a creative project.

When the project starts, however, the creatives (creative diretors, art directors, designers) are left to take care of the details. In fact, they’re left with literally every single last detail. This is where a project can start to get away from the marketer. This is where the agency is left to make decisions and guess at what the client (the marketer) really wants. Marketers have overarching goals in mind, and they know “exactly” what they want. But without communicating in detail ahead of time, they often receive a product that’s out of line with their expectations. This surely gets ironed out in revisions, but it can sour a relationship and slow down a project.

Who’s Really to Blame?
In the article, Casey Jones (of BriefLogic, formerly of Enfatico and Dell) lays blame to the marketers, but this situation is truly no one’s fault. Sure, marketers need to do a better job briefing agencies, but agencies need to ask for, if not demand, better briefings. Not to mention, we agencies could facilitate more organized and detailed discovery meetings. We could lay out problematic questions, answers, or directions ahead of time. Truthfully, we see red flags a mile away, but usually due to time constraints, budget constraints, or general laziness (not in our case, of course), agencies ignore these issues and push forward with whatever we think is best.

The reason I’m compelled to comment on this topic is that both marketers and agencies should consider this issue and try as best we can to remedy it. I have a hunch that marketers don’t even realize that we can’t read minds, and when they blame us for a product they weren’t expecting, they’re perfectly justified to complain if they don’t even know they could’ve done more on their end.

We’ve learned over time that small problems only get bigger. Relationships are tricky, and any time you can alleviate pain points or bring something up early, it’s in everyone’s best interest to do so. We’re all just trying to do good business, after all.

A Final Thought
So consider yourself warned, marketers, and give more detailed briefs!
And agencies, stop acting like everyone knows our business and processes as well as we do!

Let’s start by looking at the options when it comes to mobile marketing, and clearly define the differences between each. (You may be surprised how often people confuse them.) I sat down with Chuck Sacco, VP of Client Strategy at Movitas to help shed some light on mobile technology and what you need to know.

Know Your Options
Standard Website – Built for a desktop computer that can be accessed from a mobile device. The developer didn’t take mobile devices into account when building. (This will help to differentiate it from the mobile website).

Mobile Website – A browser-based website that is developed specifically for a fast and efficient experience on mobile devices. Traditionally, the content is in a list form, pages load quickly, and heavy visuals are simplified, but that is changing as technology advances. Chuck added, “Newer mobile optimized sites can be quite sophisticated. Take a look at m.espn.com for example. It’s also important to remember that the complexity of the features depends upon the type of device. These mobile sites can detect your device and deliver the appropriate experience based on the device capabilities.”

Mobile Application – This is a native application sold through an app store. This application is not readily available to the public like a website, and is usually purchased through an app store and then downloaded onto the user’s mobile device.

The State of Mobile
Ok, now let’s move on to some hard numbers. ComScore reported that smartphone usage escalated in the US in 2010 to 1 in 4 subscribers, up from about 1 in 10 in 2008. A common misconception is that smartphone users are more willing to use the common web browser more than download an app. Comscore’s November 2010 report shows that the numbers are actually very similar, with about 35% of smartphone users accessing a browser on their device, and about 33% downloading apps.  In what may be the most daring of all smartphone predictions, The Mobile Marketing Association expects smartphones will represent more than 50% of the market by Q3 2011.

Chuck emphasized the importance of considering the industry you’re in. “The stats show substantial growth for mobile web and native apps, but before choosing one or the other on a whim, it’s important to note that certain verticals are better fit for one experience over the other. Finance, retail and restaurant verticals show enormous growth in mobile web advertising, but aren’t growing as quickly as other verticals in launching successful native apps.”

The mobile optimized website is undeniably the first step into mobile for most businesses who have survived with a traditional website for many years but are now seeing many of their customers using smartphones to access their site. Although mobile browsing makes up only about 3.5% of total web browsing according to NetMarketShare, this number is growing quickly, up from about 1.6% one year ago. The other thing to note is that this growth in mobile web browsing is replacing desktop browsing to some extent, as we see desktop browser use dropping almost 2% during 2010. In this report published by mobile search company Taptu, they present their expectations for the future describing the move to “the Mobile Touch Web,” which they define as: “Web sites created for mobile touchscreen devices, with finger-friendly layouts and lightweight pages that are fast to load over cellular networks.” In their original report Taptu predicted over 1 million mobile optimized (browser-based) websites popping up by the end of 2011. Four months later they amended their projection to come much earlier, at the end of 2010, based on how quickly the mobile optimized sites were popping up.

Pros and Cons
Even with a burgeoning touchscreen smartphone market and so much marketing for Apple’s App Store, native apps are actually growing at a much slower pace than the mobile optimized market.

We should also note the differences in development costs, delivery and maintenance for each. A mobile optimized website can be developed for less than a native app and launched much more quickly without the need to pass it through an app store approval process. Mobile optimized websites can be updated and enhanced quickly by the developer while native applications force the developer to re-submit, get approval from the app store, and require the user to download an app update.

Also, unlike the mobile optimized site that can be developed to be compatible for multiple devices, native apps must be developed for each device and submitted separately to each device’s proprietary app store. This makes a native app a much more expensive route.

Decide What Your Goals Are
If the goal of your application is to provide a mobile destination for marketing efforts, developing a native app may be the wrong approach. Consider the potential to drive users to a mobile website with one touch of the screen through traditional marketing, social media or QR codes. A native application requires a user to download an app before they can access info and learn about your product or services. Chuck agreed and noted, “Understanding the context of use and being clear on the goals of a mobile deployment are an extremely critical part of the process. Where and when are consumers most likely to be exposed to a mobile site or app?  In the travel industry, it’s often about in-location information.  Context of use becomes a key driver for how a business may want to influence behavior.  For example, a well-placed QR code can drive new behaviors tied to a specific marketing goal.”

Know Your Business
Deciding whether your company should launch a native mobile app in addition to a mobile website also comes down to your industry, products and services. Do you have customers that shop frequently? Do you have continuously changing products and information? Will your customers need or want to use your app daily or at least weekly? If the answer is “yes”, maybe a native app is for you. If the answer is “no”, you’re probably wasting your time/money and the user’s mobile screen real estate with an app that is rarely used.

So When Do You Develop A Native Application?
As Kevin Nakeo writes in this Mashable Mobile article, “Once you’ve optimized the experience, you can use your mobile website to graduate users to a more robust native app.” Even though a native app may be more attractive than the mobile optimized site because you have the ability to make money through user downloads, Kevin also explains the challenge with launching a successful app: “One of the most important differences between a popular app and the thousands you’ve never heard of is the merchandising from the iTunes App chart. Hitting the Top 4 on the Free App chart drove over 250,000 downloads for [our] WhitePages Mobile App. Download volume and positive ratings are important factors needed to get onto the chart…It helps to think of the mobile web as a beta, and the app as gold.”

So You’re Ready For An App…
New app developers and development platforms are popping up everyday. These resources give you a jumping-off point for creating a native or web app that can be within your resources and budget. If you’re wondering where to get started, Giles Goodwin of Widgetbox mentions some tips and tools to consider when approaching app development in this article.

No matter your approach, the point is that you know your options and are taking mobile technology seriously. There’s no doubt that your customers and users are, and that upsurge will continue for years to come.

Contributors:
Chuck Sacco
VP of Client Strategy at Movitas
President of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic
http://twitter.com/chucksacco

More Reading:
Awesome mobile websites - http://www.mobileawesomeness.com/

Why you need to optimize a mobile site, not just redirect - http://searchengineland.com/why-mobile-searchers-need-mobile-optimized-sites-40386

Still, there is hesitation and sometimes denial from C-level executives concerning the value of social media marketing, especially within small businesses. Even with convincing arguments from marketing directors, you have to wonder why CFOs and CEOs are sitting and waiting for more financial proof before they carve out a line for social media in their budgets, as if ROI (a very specific financial measurement) is the only metric to quantify the value of social media spend. What about brand saturation, engagement, loyalty and reputation with consumers?

Even if your company doesn’t sell products online and a conversion is hard to define, there are interaction metrics such as “likes”, comments and increased web traffic. These metrics are still too vague, intangible and unsubstantial for some decision-makers who pull table scraps from other lines of an already tight marketing budget to get started with social media.

Let’s step back and talk about some of the benefits and capabilities of social media marketing:

• Social media provides a 24/7 customer service and risk management platform for brands to stay current on all compliments, complaints and more serious issues like product malfunctions
• Social media is an immediate and intimate platform to communicate with fans and customers
• Social media adds revenue through ecommerce applications such as a Facebook storefront
• Social media provides a great channel to test ideas, campaigns and applications and get feedback from loyal followers
• Social media increases brand buzz from advocates engaging with the brand and sharing their experiences
• Social media is no longer in an experimental phase and oozes potential for marketers to immediately connect (and stay connected) to their fans and consumers

Ford took an innovative approach to unveiling the much anticipated 2011 Ford Explorer on Facebook, breaking from the traditional car show premier. Ford’s sales are up almost 22% this year (Reuters) and whether or not you want to attribute some of the growth and success to social media initiatives, the numbers are impressive.

Are You Still Doubtful?
Burger King might have been doubtful, too, when they launched the “Sacrifice Ten Friends” Facebook campaign, which attracted 20,000 new users and resulted in 200,000 sacrificed friends. Read more about the campaign and other big brands using social media here.

You get the point, let’s move on.

Start With A Plan
Before calculating a value for your social media marketing, or even deciding what initiatives make sense, objectives must be clearly defined. What are you looking to accomplish with social media? Eli Gassert of the social engagement platform, Yunno, stresses, “To be successful with our applications and contests, we need a strong understanding of the client’s goals, expectations and current following. We need to know what would be a measure of success that would make them happy. 100 new fans? 1,000? 10,000? Or is it a different goal altogether?”

Be Patient, You Won’t Be An Overnight Success
There’s more you should know. Social media can forge long-term connections and loyalty with less up-front expense than traditional advertising, but it takes time, a lot of teamwork and intelligent creative content. It can take six months to a year to establish a presence and even longer to build an engaged, receptive following. As Megan Smith of Brownstone PR describes, “[brands] don’t understand that there needs to be a plan in place. It’s not as simple as just posting promotional items every once in a while. Brands that still question whether they should fully embrace social media as part of their marketing strategy don’t understand the value and how Twitter and Facebook really work.”

If you’re still on the fence, give it some time and thought, and maybe you’ll find your footing in social media when it makes sense. It’s fine to experiment at first to help you test content and messaging. When you’re ready to hit the ground running, start with clear objectives and a solid plan.

More reading:
Conversation Agent tells us about the social media learning curve
The 5 components of a complete social media program from iMediaConnection

I recently met a newcomer to  Philadelphia at a Chamber of Commerce orientation who is positioning himself as a sales trainer that can help clients leverage social media brand strategies to increase referrals and sales.  Not only is he providing an updated twist on the generic “sales coach” profession by consulting clients on a developing marketing tool that folks seem to struggle with, he realizes the importance of making sure a captive  audience understands his value proposition.  When it was time for his elevator pitch, in a charming southern drawl fit for a preacher, my new friend informed the room that he “turns customers into crusaders and your followers into a cult following.”  The emphasis here does not fall upon his profession because sales coaches abound anywhere there’s a business and an insecurity, but on the unique, or seemingly unique outcome.  Imagine you’re one of his potential clients.  Would you rather hear about the sales coaching (i.e. training people to ask other people difficult questions) or the results that the training bears?

His delivery was perfect.  It made an impression.  My thoughts were, “I will sound unoriginal when it’s my turn.  Best case scenario.”  My performance probably read boring and scared – a really odd combination.  This is slightly ironic because I think most people consider my job and Brolik to be boss, and our portfolio speaks for itself.  The problem was simple – I hadn’t put any effort into making Brolik sticky, even though it is.  There are a lot of companies that “do website design, online marketing, and video production,” but Brolik works hard with clients to manifest and enhance their strengths using cutting edge technology.  Brolik helps clients stand-out no matter what industry, sexy or homely.  We do for clients’ corporate identities what I was not doing for Brolik.  This is a classic example of the cobbler’s son not having any shoes (we DO, however, have a website).

I gave the Texan a ring a couple days after the Chamber orientation and we scheduled coffee for the following week.  When we started exchanging ideas I wasn’t surprised that he is focused on getting to the core of what his services truly mean to his audience.  As a newcomer and entrepreneur in the Philadelphia area, this guy is really concerned with establishing a sticky brand.  Like many symbiotic businesspeople, his mantra is, “give first and get later.”  The sticky factor?  He took out his phone and recorded my elevator pitch to post to his youtube channel.  Here he was, acting on his MO by promoting me and helping me improve a boring/frightened shortcoming.  When he asked me what I thought about my performance on the recording I said, “It could be better, could be worse.”  I was pleased with myself, though, because the Texan made me conscious of, and active in, improving my chances to make an impression and succeed.  From a value proposition perspective, I’d say this newcomer has a shot.

Social Discounting
What if the more users “talk” about a product, the more the price drops? It’s happening… Uniqlo’s recent Twitter campaign is offering up to 60% off popular products before they’re released. The price drops in small increments as potential shoppers tweet about it. What’s next? Imagine online brand advocates paying for a product based on a scale of how much they “talk” about a product and how big their following is. In this case, the brand is paying for word-of-mouth from the happy consumer who will tell all of her friends.

Group and Location Buying
You’ve probably heard of Groupon, if only in the last few months. It’s because the system is taking online shoppers and coupon lovers by storm. Groupon sends daily coupons that offer enormous savings, but you’re limited to a single offer per day. The catch- the coupon only works if a certain buyer minimum is reached. Location-based group buying is also becoming popular. Check out GroupTabs, where bars and restaurants offer deals to customers if a certain number of Foursquare check-ins are reached. Bring your friends and save money (but only if you bring enough friends!)

Community Impact
Why not make a difference and increase your brand awareness and credibility at the same time? Many brands are connecting with charities and causes, even teaming up with multiple brands for more impact. Pepsi is making waves with their new campaign, Pepsi Refresh Project. American Express and Fox’s Glee are taking it a step further with their new Members Project campaign, where they go as far as to challenge viewers to make a difference in the community, starting with a social impact personality test. These brands are using a pull rather than push approach with their marketing that puts community first and brand marketing second.

There are fresh examples of these new-age consumer-driven campaigns and applications launching every day. Giving up control and risk taking is really a calculated strategy to spread awareness for brands and products.

We get calls about it all the time – a potential customer asks if we can land them on the first page of Google, perhaps thinking we can control the whims of Google’s search engine with a few lines of code or an incantation over a black cauldron. Invariably, they grow confused and indignant when asked what keywords they want to show up on the first page for, resisting recommendations that include visible changes to their website. They especially aren’t interested in adding pages full of keyword heavy content to the site; who has time to write that stuff anyway? What they really want is to get more website traffic. My best advice to these proactive entrepreneurs is to start a blog. Here’s why:

1) SEO – Nothing is better for a website’s SEO than adding lots of informative content that is industry or service related. Writing a short blog entry that explains some of your business’ finer points is a great way to attract those interested in your products or services. It’s amazing how effectively an article full of blog tips can attract people who search for “how to write a blog.” Similarly, a blog or website that becomes a wealth of information on Internet marketing techniques and practices will tend to attract people searching for a marketing expert. Why swim against the current of Google’s search algorithm when you can just play to its intent of providing users exactly what they’re looking for?

2) Let’s give ‘em something to talk about – Aside from search engine traffic (and those who type the URL straight into the address bar), a site’s most important metric is referral traffic, that is, users who click a link to your site from some other location. Whether it’s from your Facebook page or a link from a partner company’s website, your best tool for drawing these inbound clicks is to have content that your target audience wants to read/watch/listen to. So, start a blog, write an entry about using organic, garden fresh ingredients in your recipes and post a link on your restaurant’s Facebook fan page. At Brolik, we nearly doubled the number of referral clicks to our website with just this technique. They weren’t bounces either, the users stayed on our site for an average of several minutes because they were actually reading the article. Write really good stuff and you’ll find that other blog websites will use or link to the content, giving you even more avenues for referral clicks. What better target audience for our web and interactive focused content than those who regularly read a well known technology blog like Mashable or Engadget?

3) Blogging for PR- A corporate blog can be the most direct, open line of communication with customers and the rest of your industry. It’s long been the territory of a PR firm to help establish corporate credibility with careful placement of press releases and articles in well known industry periodicals and resources. Now you can take control of your own destiny, forming a professional reputation for being on top of your industry with the newest ideas and tools. A lot of trust and respect comes with being the authority on topics related to your industry so make sure people feel this security with your brand. Conversely, the openness of communication that creating a blog allows can be a great way to show a little personality. Where more formal means of communication may obligate you to write with a straight face, your blog gives an opportunity to open up and live a little, forming a more human relationship with your readers.