Want to ruin your brand image? It does not matter if you are an individual or a company, just connect Twitter to LinkedIn. Once you do you will have what I call TwinkedIn. Not LinkedIn, not Twitter. Just a piece of crap.
The worst thing that has happened to LinkedIn is Twitter integration. At first it was useful. One post could quickly and efficiently be populated not only on Twitter, but also LinkedIn. What a great and useful integration! Well the fun is gone, now it is just plain annoying.
As I have started using LinkedIn more and more over the last few weeks I have noticed a few specific connections spamming my update feed with utter junk. Beauties like this…
“RT @ike_padilla : Partying with @CaseyAlva @scottbarretto @salonski in #Telluride #NightlifeIsYourFriend”
Yep, I totally want to work with your company now that I know you’re partying all night. Hello! This is especially bad since the person who posted it is the president of a company that provides “strategic and tactical advice on how to extend, leverage, implement and support a corporate brand in all areas of social networking.” Maybe you should rethink this. I hope you do not posts things like this for your clients.
How about this gem…
“Fantastic planet and moon http://t.co/noSgsQ9D.”
I don’t think I can imagine anything more useless than this. And, it comes from a content management “professional”. Hmmm.
If you see anything even slightly resembling this please run as far away as you can! This is not social media, this is brand suicide. I do not care what you did last night partying, I want to know what you can do for me. And, that picture of a planet means nothing to anyone looking for a content management company. That tweet is at best confusing, and at worst prohibitive to your company’s growth.
The 6-Senses of Branding
When developing a brand it is easy to get lost in the superficial.
How does the logo look?
What should the tag line be?
These are common questions people ask when thinking of branding. Unfortunately these questions only focus on a small fragment of the overall brand image. They are reflections of the brand, not what the brand is. To understand the fundamentals of branding think about all the different ways you as a human perceive the world.
As a human we all have five senses. We see, hear, touch, taste and smell. We have all these special abilities that give input to our brain of what is around us. We then use these inputs to make decisions, to learn and to understand. Through this process we also tie-in a sixth-sense of sorts, feelings or emotions. When developing a brand you need to develop it so that your customers perceive it with each of their senses.
So let’s look at these questions with a real brand. I’ll use JetBlue as an example. I’ll use this because it is fairly hard to define in many ways, but I’ll try my best. Hopefully something difficult like this will help you see how to shape your own brand.
The final sense is that of feeling or emotion. Once someone has perceived your brand with all available sensory perception he or she will start to tie-in emotion. The psychology of emotional ties to decision making is concrete. As humans we make decisions based off of the emotional connections we have created. These connections can also work in reverse. The important and difficult thing here is making an emotional connection that is consistant for everyone that comes in contact with the brand. Once you have done that you can consistently offer messaging that everyone relates to and understands.
I hope this helps you in thinking about your brand. Once you have figured out how people perceive your brand using all their senses you will better be prepared to convey everything the brand means.