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With all the noise on the Web today, good branding is more important than ever. Even if your business is not a cutting edge tech startup, the overall identity of your face on the Web, social media and your storefront should be unified, clean and compelling.

 

There’s a lot about doing business on the Web that is inexpensive and turn-key: All you need to fire up a basic website, blog, or social media presence is an e-mail address. But no Web app can substitute for real design vision, and your logo is the linchpin that ties all of your business’s aesthetics together.

 

Whether you’re going to hire a pro or put those college art electives to good use, take a moment to heed some advice from the experts about what makes a biz logo “sticky” in the minds of web-savvy consumers.

Earlier this year, I performed this social media strategy audit for a smaller company.  After presenting the results and my findings to the company, I was on a conference call with the owner and his son, who was the marketing manager, discussing what their next steps should be.  My findings, coupled with the company’s resources and what they wanted to accomplish via social media, suggested that they could probably benefit from launching a company blog.

But I wasn’t convinced that the company could handle running a blog.  In my previous talks with the marketing manager, I got the impression that they could only devote 1 person to the blog, and I didn’t feel that they really understood how much of a workload would be required.  I was recapping my findings with the owner and his son, and the owner remained silent while the son did all the talking.

After about 30 mins, I wasn’t at all convinced that the company was ready to commit to writing the blog, and was willing to put the time and effort into it.  And quite frankly, I didn’t think the company had the passion that would be required to maintain it.

I finally decided that it was time to cut to the chase, and see if they were serious or not.  So I told the son that I thought that a blog could work for his company, but that I didn’t believe they had the resources available to commit to the project long-term, and that I quite frankly didn’t think they could devote the time and energy necessary to sustain the blog.

The owner decided to speak up for the first time. “Look” he said in a slightly irritated tone, “I can DO this! I love this business and I know how to talk to my customers! I can do this, I want to do this!”

Don’t be an idiot. Don’t be a jerk. But, don’t be afraid to make a fool of yourself.

I spend a lot of my days trying to figure out what clicks. You can read that last sentence in any number of ways. When it comes to looking at Social Media (and Blogs, in particular) it’s always fascinating to see what gets the most attention. Here’s my unsubstantiated opinion from a market of one (me): it’s the very personal stuff and it’s the stuff that pushes the standard thinking to the edge.

When you make yourself vulnerable, people not only see a more human side of you, but they wind up seeing themselves in your content too.

It’s not easy to do. When you give opinions, many people see it as grandstanding or as someone trying to create a set of rules. When you disagree with a commonly held ideal, you may be treated like a Charlatan. It doesn’t have to be that dramatic. We may all attempt to be professional by day and casual by night, but by taking a look at the Twitter stream – during any particular time of the day – you’ll quickly see how dramatically those lines are blurring. Learning how to be comfortable with making a fool of yourself could well become one of the better character traits you can pick up on.