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If you held the original patent on the modern slide rule (first introduced by a French artillery lieutenant in 1859), for more than 110 years you had a license to print money.

Over the years, the slide rule got simpler, more colorful, slimmer and even more specialized. In the 1930s, for example, the revolutionary E6B model was released–a circular slide rule created specifically for airline pilots. In 1952, the Swiss watch company Breitling took the E6B a leap further by embedding a circular slide rule into a pilot’s wrist watch.

The Texas Instruments TI-30, circa 1976

More than 100 years of iterations, based on the same basic technology.

Then the ceiling caved in. In 1976, Texas Instruments released the TI-30–a $25 scientific calculator that rendered 100 years of slide rule technology obsolete.

Okay, so enough with the slide rule history lesson already. What this story really demonstrates is how most “innovation” comes in the form of incremental improvements. And to the outside observer, those incremental improvements were just what was called for. The world didn’t need (and wasn’t looking for) a new technology to replace the slide rule for calculating trig equations or logarithms. But when the pocket calculator came along (which was more or less a “repurposing” of off-the-shelf technologies that made the transistor radio possible), well, 100 years of ”new and improved” slide rules weren’t worth the wood they were made of.

Such is the dynamic of “disruptive technologies.” They seemingly come out of nowhere, but are mostly just a reimagining of existing technologies, harnessed for a specific new purpose.

Disruptive technologies have been with us for a long time. Flushing toilets, electric lighting, frozen entrees, the iPod. These are a few not-so-distant examples. Of late, it seems every time your pick up the paper (though today it’s most likely a tablet), you’ll read about yet another long-standing technology that’s been banished to the history books. Be it record stores, travel agencies, film cameras or “snail mail.”

The photo to the right gives us a snapshot of how personal technologies have evolved in just the last two decades.

ABOVE: 1993 Technology BELOW: Same Technology 2013

With “disruptive” technologies now coming at us faster and faster, what can industry do to make sure they’re not on the same track as the slide rule? A few things come to mind:

1. Develop a “flanking strategy.” Just because you own 90% of the market doesn’t mean you always will. No matter your market share, you are potentially one technological advance away from being out of business. So rather than stay “fat and happy” with your situation, invest 10% of your profits towards a flanking strategy. Call it your “what if” fund. Create a division whose only job is to look at new technologies in other categories and ask “what if we could harness them in our category.” Xerox did this in the 1960s, and ended up patenting many of the technologies that are now commonplace in our personal computers. Tech companies live-and-die by flanking strategies. They are under continual pressure to innovate or die. Borrow some of this imperative for your category.
2. Whatever you do, continually add value for your customers. Some breakthroughs are of the truly mundane variety. It’s just that no one had applied them to certain industries before. Southwest did it when they understood they were in the hospitality business as much as they were in the travel business. So they went all-in on recruiting the friendliest people, training them, and giving them the freedom to create great experiences for their customers. This at a time when most carriers saw themselves as “ways to get from point-A to point-B.”
3. Understand your customers’ pain points. Actually go out and “live in your customer’s shoes” to see what she sees, experience things the way she does. You’ll find out rather quickly that your offerings are a mere blip in her existence, and that there are things you may be able to do to make her life easier elsewhere. For example, understanding how important the commodity of “time” is to modern families, a “60 minute guarantee” or something similar in a category that might not seem time-sensitive could be worth testing.

One thing is for sure. Technology is going to be with us, and it’s going to change change things quickly. By staying as knowledgeable about your customers, and being as relevant as possible for them, you’ll keep yourself on the “calculator” track.

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Mickey Ramblings, customer experience, how-to, strategy adding value, customer empathy, disruptive products, disruptive technologies, Southwest Airlines, time starved customers

If you were hobnobbing at a cocktail party, and asked anyone there what business they were were in, most likely you’d get an answer of the functional variety. “We’re in the tire business.” “We manufacture airplane parts.” “We’re a high-end steak house.”

What you’re not likely to hear is “We’re in the business of creating amazing experiences for our customers.” And in these days of information overload, categories bleeding into one another and seemingly endless consumer choices, creating an amazing experience should be Job One for successful marketers.

Rather than focus on what they do, successful marketers focus on why customers would be attracted to them.

Positive experiences are viral. Customers talk about them. They get spread across the world wide web. They take on a life of their own, without involvement from the marketer. And for most consumers, reading/hearing of others’ experiences carry more weight than what they hear from the companies themselves.

Positive experiences can be pre-emptive and remain a constant in categories of ever-changing variables. And more often than not, they can scale.

There are tons of social psychology studies that show that sparking an emotional response in customers not only serves as a “trigger moment” where the buying decision is made, but is also what drives customers to take “ownership” of the product or brand, and see it as a part of their little world.

Sounds pretty aerie-fairy in this world of spreadsheets, analytics and focus groups. But it’s the one thing that can help elevate you above the plethora of competitors that are out there.

Just ask Apple, Amazon or Nike.

While these may be considered extreme examples, nevertheless their businesses have been built by creating amazing experiences (just look at the number of “Apple Unboxing Videos” you’ll find on YouTube).

What makes companies like these stand out is not necessarily the functionality of what they sell. It’s their undying commitment to providing positive (and unique, and often times surprising) user experiences.

Which leads to the question, how can a company or business go about “manufacturing” a positive experience? While the formula will likely vary category to category and business to business, there are three things that are universal:

1) Find out what your most loyal customers appreciate about you, and put that on steroids. Figure out how every customer or prospect can experience that part of you.

2) Figure out your category’s customer “pain points” and see what you can do to either eliminate or minimize them for customers doing business with you.

3) Perhaps most importantly, surprise customers with something they weren’t expecting and can’t find anywhere else. This not only provides a unique and memorable experience that will be easily shared, but it also helps compensate for areas in your value chain where you might not be the best.

The success of marketing can be summed up in this statement: “It’s not about what you say. It’s not about what you do. It’s about how you make them feel.”

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Mickey On Clients, On Customers, customer experience, how-to, strategy Amazon, Apple, customer experience, engineering positive experience, Nike, pain points, why people buy

“How will this work in mobile?”

A Say Media survey of 1,200 smartphone and tablet users is just one of many studies that show how the adoption of mobile is now past its tipping point (download the whitepaper here). Sixty-one percent of respondents said they researched a product on their mobile device before making the decision to buy, while 37% said they validated a price at the point of sale. Nearly half claimed to have redeemed an offer using their mobile device, and 44% said purchased goods directly from their mobile device.

Clearly, if you’re not addressing the mobile audience, you’re leaving a lot of revenue on the table.

Gone are the days when you could get away with designing a website strictly with the 13-inch screen in mind. Websites that are clunky, don’t fit the screen, take forever to load, are built in Flash, require too many clicks, and don’t anticipate the needs of the mobile user are quickly abandoned.

So what’s a marketer to do? First and foremost, design and build your website with the mobile user in mind. Make sure the elements automatically re-size for the 4-inch screen. Don’t make users click through a bunch of pages. Make sure the site can be navigated with a single finger.

In the earliest days of mobile (like, uh, last year…), it wasn’t unusual for an organization to actually create and host two sites: one for the desktop and one for mobile. These days, that’s not really necessary. For example, there are readily-available custom Wordpress themes that allow you to create a site that adapts your content for both experiences. It is possible that one site can be slave to two masters.

The main thing is, avoid making big changes to your existing website without a clear understanding of how that will affect the mobile user. And if your site is due for a refresh or an upgrade, be sure to keep the mobile user in mind.

It’s one customer you can’t afford to let slip away.

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Mickey Mobile Marketing, Research, customer experience, how-to mobile, mobile customer, mobile research, smart phones, tablets, wordpress

If you are interested in exploring guerilla marketing (or, if you prefer, non-traditional marketing) because you’re committed to creating something outrageous, standing out from the crowd, hitting people with an unexpected message when their guards are down and perhaps inciting a viral campaign, then it might just be for you. If you’re interested in guerilla because you want to save money or don’t have the budget for a mass media campaign, prepare to be disappointed.

“Guerilla marketing” is often defined as hitting consumers (prospects) with marketing messages either in places they don’t expect them, or in ways they don’t expect. While guerilla campaigns are rarely scalable, they can break through the mind-numbing clutter we each have to deal with each day, and can help consumers think about you and your offerings in a new, fresh way.

That is, if you do it right. And let me just say it here: guerilla marketing is not a cheaper way to do marketing. While it is true you won’t have the media expenses of a more traditional mass media campaign, you will have a lot of expenses mass media campaigns don’t incur. A lot of what we in the business refer to as “man hours”–fabrication costs, research and preparation, event planning and hosting, content creation, fulfillment and follow-up. All things you don’t have to worry about in the “set-and-forget” world of paid media advertising.

So how do you know if the non-traditional approach you’re considering will be a hit or an exercise in futility? As it turns out, many of the most successful guerilla marketing efforts have a lot in common. More specifically, they’re able to unequivocally answer “yes” to each of these questions:

• Is it surprising/quirky/unexpected? Unlike with mass media marketing, where you can buy attention, with non-traditional marketing, you have to earn it. Your content has to be disarming, and catch people with their guards down. These beer stein decals installed on glass doors are but one example.



• Does it amplify the brand’s story outside the traditional media space? Getting attention is great. But if it doesn’t play back to your core brand story (and what you want people to say about you), you’re likely wasting your time. This urinal poster for the Arizona Science Center is an example of linking non-traditional creative and media to boost the brand.



• Is it sustainable? Coming up with a “blockbuster” event might sound like a good idea, but too often these are little more than closed-ended tactics. This video for Coca Cola showcases one event (in this case, rewarding good samaritans who turned in an unattended wallet with tickets to a soccer match), but it leads to a bigger pay off for the brand–“Buy That Person A Coke.” Works for honest folks who turn in wallets. Works in hundreds of other situations too.
• Is it supported? Is it a stand-alone execution, or is it tied to other things the brand is doing, both on- and off-line? Social media provides your brand many possible ways to reach people. Plan ahead to determine how to amplify your guerilla tactics through social. Check out this video to see how The Opticians Council Of Canada amplified their guerilla tactics.
• Can it do things in a way that can’t be done in a traditional media space? Getting out of the two-dimensional world gives you lots of possibilities to explore. Check out this guerilla tactic for a gym.



• Is it disruptive, without being inconveniencing or annoying? People are used to advertising messages being restricted to specific times and spaces (magazine pages, TV programming breaks, etc.). Once you venture outside the expected ad media, you run the risk of irritating your audience and building resentment against you. If you’re going to intrude into their lives, you better make it worthwhile for them.

With the rise of social media, and your audience’s ability to share and spread things that interest them, guerilla marketing can serve to garner tons of attention to the brand, ignite word of mouth and generate ample free media, and get people talking about the brand. (Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” and Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice“ are two of the most famous examples).

In the not-so-best cases, brands have wasted a ton of money, resources and good will developing stuff that their audiences, to put it bluntly, could care less about (Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” web series comes to mind).

For 50 great examples of guerilla tactics that worked, click here.

The net of it then, is that in regard to guerilla tactics, while spending money is not a sure-fire recipe for success, not spending it is a sure-fire way to fail.

Posted by Mickey.

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Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Clients, Uncategorized, how-to, strategy burger king, guerilla advertising, guerilla marketing, non-traditional marketing, old spice, ted from accounting

Here’s a stat that oughta make any marketer in her right mind reach for the Pepto: a survey conducted by CEB’s Sales Executive Council in 2011 revealed that in nearly ⅔ of transactions, the buying process is being conducted WITHOUT the involvement of a sales representative.

And we’re not just talking about DVDs from Amazon or return customers here. We’re increasingly seeing this happen with greater frequency for big ticket items, like appliances and cars (sometimes even homes). Even in complicated business-to-business markets, where conventional wisdom says buyers need a shepherd to navigate the purchase process.

So what’s driving this increasing desire to DIY sales? In short, we’ve trained customers to act this way. Oh, maybe not literally. But we’ve made so much information available to potential buyers, and third-party reviews and experiences are so close at hand, that even the most naive among us can be excused for thinking there’s no need to involve the voice of the company.

Perhaps more importantly, we’ve also trained customers and prospects that we’re about “selling,” not necessarily about “solving.” Trust is viewed as a by-product and the not the #1 reason to interact with an organization. If I feel a salesman is primarily looking out for his interests, do I need any other reasons to look elsewhere for answers?

Acknowledging that customers are looking to other resources and other voices before pulling the trigger should incite us to use the sales process as a way to “add value” to the customer’s experience. Here are a few thoughts on how you might do this:

• 1) It begins by understanding that the customer is not looking for a product or service, she’s looking for a solution. Get to know your customers, their behaviors, and what problems they have that aren’t being solved via conventional means. What’s the context of your product’s usage? Understanding your customer’s needs not only help you better frame your products as solutions, it also provides invaluable feedback that can help improve your offerings and how they’re delivered.
• 2) Be aware of what your potential customer is seeing. Go to Google and some other search engines, and try out some of the short-tail and long-tail search terms your prospects are likely to use, and see what shows up. This will give you a good start into understanding how your customer is educating himself and where he’s getting his information.
• 3) Make sure you have a voice in the search process. If you’re not showing up the searches I mentioned above, figure out why. Is your web site optimized? Does it have relevant content? Has it not been updated since the Bush administration? Then, take steps to contribute additional fresh content to the mix that might be found by your prospects. Blogs are a killer way to get fresh solution-based content out there. Web video also indexes off the charts, and a how-to series or case study series both stand a really good chance of attracting eyeballs quickly.
• 4) Reach out to your fans. Have some customers that rave about you online, whether on your web properties or elsewhere? Give them a shout out. Acknowledge them. That lets others who also like you know that it’s cool to talk about their experiences with you.
• 5) Get feedback. Follow up on every request, every comment and every inquiry, not just with the intent of closing the sale, but to see if the prospects are getting what they needed or are looking for.
• 6) Above all, emphasize the customer relationship over the sale. B-to-B marketers for the most part have been great at being sherpas for their customers, understanding that until trust is built , the chance of a sale is almost nil. Now it’s time for the rest of us to get on board.

The main thing is to avoid thinking that this “new normal” doesn’t affect you and your business. I guarantee it does. And the more proactive you are at embracing the new “customer path” to purchase, the better your chance for future success.

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Mickey New Media, On Customers, customer experience, how-to buyer behavior, path to purchase, purchase path, relationship selling, trust

Dumb question, right? When you think “Harley Davidson,” chances are you think “authentic biker,” or “classic road cycles” or even “loud,” “tattoos and leather” or “badass.” Not exactly the same images that come to mind when you think of a cute pink and white scooter.

The Cadillac Cimarron. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

While there may be universal agreement that a Harley scooter wouldn’t do much to solidify the Harley brand, brands are making just that kind of mistake everyday. A few examples? Dial soap launching a deodorant. A-1 Steak Sauce coming out with a chicken glaze. PanAm putting its name on hotels. And does anybody remember the Cadillac Cimmaron?

All these decisions were greenlighted by really smart people, backed by impeccable research and sound marketing principles. In a nutshell, these brand extensions were viewed as a way to borrow the equity of a well established brand to “buy” a significant portion of a “related” market, and to inexpensively build incremental sales. Make the most of your brand, and give people more reason to think of it.

In practice, you trade in your reputation (another word for brand) in exchange for a short-term boost of awareness or profit. Unfortunately, many times the price to be paid for that short-term gain is a diluted brand than quickly loses its cache. The poster child example of this is Yahoo!, which went from being the dominant search engine of the 1990s with a market cap of $114 billion, to a I-have-no-idea-what-they-are-now company who’s had six top executives in six years and is now worth less than 1/6th of its high value (with less than 10% of the market share of Google).

So how do you go about determining whether your proposed brand extension will be the next Diet Coke or the next Xerox Computer?

We’ve found that brand equity is a two-way street. More often than not, a successful line extension doesn’t just “borrow” equity from the brand, it also “adds to it.”

The key that often determines a successful extension vs. an exercise in futility is this: does the proposed line extension jibe with “the real business we’re in.” This goes beyond the functional aspects of a product to more of the “problem” the brand solves well in the minds of your most ardent supporters. For Coke, for example, if you’re “real business” (Brand Vision) is “refreshing the masses,” then yeah, a new product that serves that purpose stands a good chance of success, and of not only “borrowing” equity from the brand, but also adding to it. Likewise, if you’re McDonald’s and your “real business” is ‘providing a variety of fast, taste-pleasing meals in a clean and friendly environment, then Chicken McNuggets or McRib sandwiches make sense. If, on the other hand, you are Dial soap, your real “business” in the minds of consumers is most likely “clean,’”not “defeats perspiration.” And if you’re A-1, your real business is “adding flavor to cheap cuts of beef.”

Looking at brand extensions through the “what business we’re really in” lens even helps explain outliers such as Apple or Virgin. Apple’s “real business” was not building and selling computers, it was in creating elegant, user-friendly cutting edge technology. Which perfectly describes the iPhone, iPod and iPad, as well as the Mac. And for Virgin? Their ”real business” could be described as “turning mundane, low-interest unimaginative markets on their ears.” Rings true for Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile, and even the original Virgin Music Centres.

The key to all this is to understand what your brand means to your customers, how they see it, and what “problem” your brand elegantly solves for them.

Lose sight of that, and you could end up with another Levi’s shoes.

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Links to five great articles we found this week. Check ‘em out:

The Scoop on “Digital Watermarks.”

Digital watermarks are basically QR codes without the clunkiness. Here’s how they work, how to create them, and why you should include them in your demand generation toolbox.

How Many Lives Does A Brand Have?

Martin Lindstrom is one of my favorite writers when it comes to following trends in the business of advertising. This treatise on how brands can be repurposed and many times be “risen from the dead” helps us envision how our own brands can evolve over time.

Declare Your Radicalness.

This article from the Harvard Business Review poses the question, are you an “incrementalist” or a “revolutionary.” More than just a Myers-Briggs personality test, this article challenges us to consider our personal styles and how we can adapt to different situations.

11 Ways To Incorporate Video Into Your Business.

Face it, wouldn’t you rather watch a five-minute video of someone putting together an IKEA bookcase than pouring through an instruction sheet? That’s one of the appeals of video, and being that 2/3 of us are visual learners, there are plenty of opportunities to use video in our marketing trees that we may not have considered before. This article from OPENForum is a good starter.

Okay, so that’s only four. But hey, it was a short week, right?

As always, you can follow me on Twitter at @mickeylonchar or @Quisenberry. See you next week.

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Mickey Mobile Marketing, New Media, On Clients, On Customers, Social Media, how-to, strategy brand refresh, brand rejuvenation, digital watermarks, friday five, Martin Lindstrom, online video, QR codes

If I hand you a brick and ask, “How many uses can you think of for this?,” you’ll probably come back to me with a dozen or so uses, all of the functional, yeah-I-sort-of-expected-that variety. You may use it to build a wall. Or pave a patio. Build a house. Or even use it as a paperweight.

If, however, I asked you, “What 40 ways can you think of to use this?,” I’m likely to get a whole different kind of list. After exhausting the obvious uses above, you’ll find yourself uncomfortably searching for other unthought-of uses. Some will be totally silly, or non-sequitar. But before long (probably around number 25 or 30), you’ll actually hit on something truly original (paint it gold and hand it out as a Fort Knox souvenir…). It is here, at this uncomfortable point when you think you’ve exhausted all practical uses for the brick, where true creativity lives. It’s where you start to find new connections between the object at hand and the world around you. You start thinking beyond the obvious solutions. Your ego stops judging every passing thought in the name of quantity.

Creativity can be defined as the process through which the mind finds formerly unrecognized relationships between two entities or ideas. It is something that allows our audience to see something in a different way.

Creativity is hard. It is a trip into uncharted territory. It is bumping into ideas that quite frankly you don’t know how to judge or evaluate.

It is taking the obvious and making it interesting.

Knowing how our mind’s creativity works is the reason few advertising creatives settle on the first idea (or handful of ideas) they find. The thinking being, if it was that obvious to me, it must be obvious to everyone, therefore there’s nothing new or exciting about it. Truly creative solutions are a bit unnerving, not because they are provocative or irrelevant, but because you’ve never seen something quite like this, and your mind doesn’t know how to evaluate them.

So next time you’re presented with an idea or concept that makes you a little uneasy, avoid the reaction of rejecting it out of hand because it is “different.” Deconstruct it to see how that idea was developed. See if it answers the needs spelled out in the creative brief. Live with it for a time. Then form your conclusion.

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Unless you’ve spent the last few months in a cave, chances are you’ve heard something recently about Pinterest. The social media platform is growing at an astonishing rate, even by the standards of social media. Just within the last few weeks, Pinterest has grown to become the number three-ranked social media network in the number of users. But what is Pinterest, exactly? In these days of social media overload, why are more and more people joining yet another social network? What should marketers know about it? And what are some possible ways of integrating Pinterest “boards” into your marketing and social media strategies?

I’ve asked Shannon Hill, a copywriter here at Quisenberry, and one of the earliest-adopters of Pinterest, to share her thoughts here on the Quisenblog.

Pinterest has been described as the most “visual” social network there is. Its simple, clean layout and page design, and its use of “pin boards” for different subjects make it easy to express your personal interests and style via photos, web images and even web video.

Turns out you have to be invited to join Pinterest. Really? An invitation? To join a social networking site?!

This small barrier into what seemed like an exclusive club piqued my interest. I waited 2 weeks. I checked my spam folder every day. Finally, it came. I was allowed to enter.

I logged in and took a look around. It was more confusing than the first time I tried Facebook. I actually read all the “help” sections, Still confused, I decided to just jump in with both feet.

Fast forward about four hours.

By then, I already had 50+ pins and was following all of my Facebook friends. So many pretty pictures. So many delicious recipes. Fashion. Art. And oh, the shoes.

Suddenly there was a catalogue of things I found beautiful and I started to see trends and tendencies I didn’t expect. I became the Pinterest stereotype of the girl that was “decorating the house she didn’t have with furniture she couldn’t afford, while planning the wedding she wasn’t going to have.”

Currently, women like me make up 87% of Pinterest users. And the women who use it, use it a lot. My experiences are similar to those of so many others, who go onto Pinterest intending to spend five minutes, and end up spending 45.

But beyond the pretty pictures and style statements, are there worthwhile Pinterest applications for marketers?

A couple of things should pique the curiosity of marketers. For starters, consider the number of users. Pinterest has grown from a community of 418,000 a year ago to 11.76 million in January 2012. That’s a 2703% increase in an 8-month period.

Then there’s the referral traffic. Pinterest is social by nature. When something is “pinned” from your website and someone clicks it, they are sent careening through the cyber universe to your site. According to Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more traffic than well established sites like Linkedin, Youtube, and Google+ combined.

But is Pinterest for you? If you have a brand or products that are considered “lifestyle” products (fashion, design, food, architecture, etc.) or are visual in nature, you might consider experimenting with your own Pinterest page.

Now, I’ve seen my fair share of “how to be successful on Pinterest” infographics. They are full of good suggestions. Pinterest is not advertising. Pin things other people would want to repin. The best time to pin is in the evening. All good advice, but what I have learned is how personal Pinterest is to each user.

Each board is a reflection of things someone loves. Things they care about. Things they find beautiful. So my biggest suggestion is not to over-think it. If your boards feel contrived or overly planned, it probably is, and you’ll be left behind. If your business is on Pinterest, be active and be passionate. What does your business do that other people will love or find beautiful?

Pinterest isn’t Facebook or Twitter. You are not sharing news. You are not calling people to action. You are allowing your business to be something they can put in their personal collection.

My advice? Do what I did. Just visit the site, poke around a bit, check to see if any of your friends or competitors or brands you admire are on there, and see what they’re doing. See how many “repins” and “likes” their pins have gotten. And if the spirit moves you, jump in.

Click here for another worthwhile article on Pinterest.

And Happy Pinning!

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Facebook pages have undergone quite a makeover in recent months, but the Granddaddy makeover of them all happens tomorrow, March 30, when Facebook automatically migrates all brand pages to its new “Timeline” format.

There are two notable changes page administrators will need to be aware of: the elimination of custom tabs in favor of a brand-created “Timeline,” and a new layout that allows you to place a page-wide “Cover” photo or image at the top of your page.

This post will give you a quick-and-dirty primer on the whole Cover concept. For insights into how to best take advantage of the Timeline itself, we’ll address that in a soon-to-come post.

While these changes may seem a bit off-putting to those of us who’ve grown accustomed to all pages looking and navigating pretty much the same, in many ways the new look offers a huge improvement to the user’s experience. First off, because pages can be more customized, there’s a huge opportunity to create a visually stunning page that will make a positive statement about the brand. And second, the Timeline format allows a brand to do some meaningful “storytelling” rather than rely on boilerplate “Info,” “Photos” and “Friend Activity.”

In short, Facebook is giving your brand the opportunity to give your page the same appeal you’ve given to your web site.

If you’ve procrastinated redressing your page for the new Timeline format, where should you start? A great place would be to select a terrific photo for your Cover. A great reference guide to the process can be found at Facebook Pages Terms. Basically, the role of your cover photo is intended to add visual impact, as opposed to trying to incite action from visitors (no longer will you be able to post messages like “Like us” or “Share this,” include price or discount offers, or include contact information, such as your web or email addresses).

While Facebook allows page admins to choose a photo from an existing photo album, such photos are probably not best suited to give you the visual impact your brand page deserves. The best-looking cover photos will be images specifically created to take advantage of the cover photo’s unusually large size and unique shape.

Your Page’s cover photo should embody the essence of your brand. A few image content ideas that might be suitable for your brand might be: candid photos of customers using your products (be sure to get permission to use their likenesses), a beauty shot of some of your most popular product, or icons that represent your brand, such as a delivery truck, distinct signage or a group shot of employees. Or, you can get creative and create a cover that makes visitors think and might compel them to share, such as these (courtesy of Buzzfeed.com):

So rather than look at Facebook’s new page look as another barrier to overcome, try to look at it as a way to uniquely engage your customers.

As always, if you have any specific questions about how to take best advantage of the new Facebook format, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

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Mickey New Media, On Clients, On Customers, Social Media, customer experience, how-to Facebook, Facebook Cover, facebook new design, facebook Timeline, storytelling on facebook