YouTube continues to dominate the video communications landscape. According to Mashable, YouTube will change the way we watch TV programming this year. In fact, Google is currently in the midst of designing user experiences on YouTube for the big screen.

Social Media Examiner also points out that we should prepare to see photo and video social networks reach their full potential this year. This includes not only YouTube, but also sharing tools like Instagram, Viddy and Tout.

There are so many great ways to utilize video and photo sharing sites – even for business. For example, here are a few of my favorite ways to use YouTube for business:

1. Show your products in action. The videos should be fast, catchy and full of action! (Check out Viddy if you are in need of some help)
2. Showcase members of your staff. This will help make your business more personable. You could also take your viewers on a tour of your business place whether that is a store or office
3. Create How-To videos or demonstrations with a favorite product.
4. And, be sure to make YouTube part of your overall social media ecosystem that’s interconnected with Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels.

Leave us a comment and share other ideas on how you’re using YouTube and video communications for your business!

“The Fastlane team brings its significant experience and forward-looking communications expertise to our venerable brand,” said Marshall Cooper, CEO of Chief Executive Group. “Fastlane will enhance the already-strong relationships we have with the CEO community.”

“It’s a privilege to be associated with Chief Executive Group. They’re a class act that strives for excellence in all that they do, which is why they are rivaled by very few,” said Christopher Faust, Founder & CEO of Fastlane. “We look forward to establishing a long-lasting business relationship with Chief Executive Group.”

BusinessInsider recently reported that Google+ had hit 25 million users, making it the fastest growing website ever. And is now recognized as one of the top ten most popular social networking sites.  But, is it worth your time to set-up and maintain yet another social media networking site?

Here are some initial observations:

While the site allows you to connect with friends, it is very different from Facebook, which serves the same purpose. Google+ has come up with the brilliant idea of having “circles.” You can set up different circles based on friends, family and coworkers, meaning you can customize what photos and information you want to share with whomever you like. This aspect mashes up a little bit of Facebook with LinkedIn allowing you to socialize with friends and network with people at work at the same time and all on one site.

Three other aspects of Google+ that are worth mentioning are Sparks, Huddles and Hangouts. Your profile’s sparks page is basically like Google Alerts – all neatly organized in one spot for whenever you want to read it. This makes it super convenient to catch up on news that interests you.

The Huddle and Hangout features are also worth noting. The Huddle is a group messaging feature that can be used for chatting with a few friends or members of an entire circle, which means great news for planning lunch with co-workers! The Hangout feature allows you to video chat with up to nine friends at the same time, which you may want to consider if you have family and friends across the country. Both these messaging features can be accessed from the web or on a smartphone device that has the Google+ app.

In a time where privacy has become a growing concern, Google+ came up with a clever solution. You’re able to easily select and manage whatever information you want shared with others or not. One challenge the site may face is the growing number of social media networking accounts and/or tools an individual has to manage. After testing the service, I would highly recommend it, especially for personal use. As for the role Google+ will play for businesses, the jury is still out.

As Google+ continues to grow and evolve, we’ll post more updates. In the meantime, let us know how you’re using the service.

Within the integrated worlds of marketing, communications, design and social media, brands and branding are terms used daily.

As Marty Neumeier writes about in his classic book, The Brand Gap, “A lot of people talk about it. Yet very few people understand it. Even fewer know how to manage it.  Still everyone wants it.”

Branding is the collective experience consumers and/or businesses have with a particular product or service.  It’s “the process involved with creating a unique name and image from a product in the consumer’s mind.”

A brand can be as large as Apple or Oprah or as small as your own personal brand. In Patrick Hanlon’s book, Primal Branding, he discusses U2 as a brand in great depth. He credits the iconic name, their creative individual names, the desire to have an ongoing dialog with their fans and unique sound, of course, as factors that have lead to their long-term success.

U2 also “gets” written and visual communications and the power of promotions as well as how to leverage new technologies.  They’ve also taken on global social issues through their ONE brand, aligning themselves with a cause that is close to their hearts.

The relationship they have built with fans worldwide can be witnessed through their website where they have an entire page devoted to spotlighting members of the U2 community. Their Twitter and Facebook pages all flow in terms of design and content.

Thanks to holistic branding, U2 has become much more than a band.  They have become a lifestyle.

Rock On…

Sources:

Primal Branding, Patrick Hanlon, 2006

www.businessdictionary.com

Who isn’t using Twitter these days? Even the Pope hoped on the bandwagon this week when he sent his first tweet from The Vatican via his iPad. While some feel that Facebook is old news, Twitter continues to grow. One-source claims that Twitter will only increase in popularity as campaigns for the 2012 elections begin.

The reason that Twitter may be so successful is that it interests not only a younger generation but also adults and even business professionals. “Many people use it for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news,” said Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive in an interview with The New York Times. Today, it is hard to find a business that is not using Twitter.

And try to find a celebrity who is not Tweeting, there are a few, but most have embraced the social media outlet. When a celebrity tweets, it enables them to have a conversation with their fans. This helps build their brand image and connect with fans on a more personal level.

It will be interesting to see the role Twitter plays in the 2012 election as well as next year’s London Olympics. In fact, the Australian Olympic Committee has already released guidelines stating the IOC “actively encourages and supports athletes…to take part in ‘social media’ and to post, blog and tweet their experiences.”  Will this change the way we typically get our news during the Olympics or how we feel about our favorite athletes? We will just have to wait and see.

Sources:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/27/idUSL3E7HR0F220110627

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/06/the_pope_tweets.html

Designing should be a pleasant experience, not torture.

Designers should be practical in going about their process. But, being practical does not mean taking short cuts or making it easier. It means being smart and efficient because time is of the essence and time is money. Practicality comes with experience and since practice makes perfect, practical is perfect.

Simple solutions, which are always ideal, come with confidence and experience. Panic and chaos do not belong as part of the design process.

When designers engage in a project, they do so because there is a visual communication problem to be solved. The client may be the one panicking given the severity of the problem; however, the designer, as the visual specialist and problem solving expert, must give off confidence and calm when counseling the client with knowledge and resolve.

Well trained designers should always have their skill-set well sharpened and available on demand for engaging in any design challenge. The designer’s skill-set includes the various techniques that come with having mastered design as a communications art and science – an aesthetics and information architecture specialty.

When inspiration is not available, good technique is always within the designer’s “go to” toolkit to be relied upon.  And, since there is only right or wrong in visual communications, than designers can’t go wrong.

Early stage design students tend to not be as confident, worry too much and overly stressed about how impressive, inventive or different their designs must be. They often forget that communicating with clarity and legibility should be the desired result. Their process tends to be overly time consuming, over experimental and could result in more failed attempts. This practice can lead to last minute frustrations, making the creative process an unpleasant experience.

A frustrating and complicated creative experience will most likely produce complicated results. Complication and confusion do not communicate well, which means that as a designer, you have created a problem when you should have found a solution.

A practical process is efficient and therefor ideal. It builds the bridge that is the path to logic, order, clarity and simplicity – all of which are basic building blocks to design.

There is no such thing as good or bad design. If it’s bad, than it simply isn’t design. Logic and reason are at the very foundation of the design practice, and therefor, design is always right.

Design is intelligent, unique, and timeless. It’s the solution.

In today’s digital economy, it’s curious to still encounter CEOs of many small and mid-sized businesses that are willing to spend high five figures or more on their cars, yet spend a fraction of that on the one vehicle that can change the face of their business. While we don’t fault anyone for wanting to drive around in style, we do question their decision-making when it comes to seriously investing or re-investing in their online presence.

These business leaders tend to view their respective websites as a lower-level priority. They still don’t fully understand the true value and potential of a well designed, architected and optimized website. A site complete with a content management system, customer relationship management system, marketing automation solutions, eCommerce and more.  In short, a shiny new site can take their businesses to much higher places than any highway can take an expensive new car.

The website is one of the most important pieces of an entire brand strategy, in which the livelihood of any business, and that of its employees depends upon. It is the front door of their communications to the world, an invitation to new business, new value and profitable relationships, as well as the bridge to all social media and other capital generating channels.

The properly planned and developed website is a vehicle that will more than pay for itself, sell itself, and change the perception of an entire corporation. You can’t say the same about a Porsche, a Bentley or a Ferrari.

Surprisingly, many CEOs tend to prefer the quick and easy route of investing less on their website, than they did on their new SUV or sports car. Needless to say, this is a short term, short sighted strategy that’ll result in a cookie cutter website that looks like everybody else’s blog. Half measures lead to sub-par outcomes that will end up costing you more in opportunities lost.

Don’t be an “also-ran” with your website. Be bold and take a leadership position. Anything else will make you blend in among your weakest competitors over time.

Following are a few design tips and advice with regards to using PowerPoint as a presentation tool:

It is a common misuse of PowerPoint, to clutter each slide with as much content and graphics as possible.

Most companies also print their PowerPoint presentation, using it as a “leave-behind brochure” type of document.

We recommend a different approach, which we feel should help one’s presentation to stand out, and improve the appearance of the presentation.

PowerPoint/Key Note presentations should be a visual AID to the speaker/presenter. The audience/client, should be looking at the speaker, while occasionally looking at a simple (easy to read from a distance) and memorable visual aid. The point of the presentations should never be for the audience to sit and consistantly read the PowerPoint slide. Content-heavy and busy PowerPoint slides will be forgotten before the meeting is over.

A PowerPoint slide should almost function as a billboard on a highway. It should make sense in a few seconds, assist the viewer in visualizing what is being said, and break up the monotony. Cluttered PowerPoints contradict this, create legibility problems, and increase commonality with your competition.

If you want to leave a document behind, do not leave a printed copy of your PowerPoint presentation.

#1, PowerPoints usually print badly.  They are low resolution and meant for the presentation screen.

#2, the speaker/presenter obviously cannot be ceded as a resource.

What can be proposed is a well put together brochure/white-paper/folder, which covers what the speaker has covered and more.  Additionally, it helps that it is created for print, to be read, rather than for visual purposes.

Viewer interpretations of beauty possess two concepts of value: aesthetics and taste. Aesthetics is the philosophical notion of beauty. Taste is a result of education and awareness of elite cultural values; therefore, taste must be learned.

In design, there is no such thing as a nice color or an ugly color. There is only the right color and the wrong color. There is contrast, and lack of contrast.  There is the right photo, the right typeface or the wrong typeface and the wrong photo. There is a right logo or a wrong logo. I like it or I don’t like it have no place in communication arts. This is right because… or this is wrong because… followed by a logical explanation is the correct way to examine any piece of visual communication.

Design is intelligent – if it is not design, than it is confusing, amateur, cluttered, illegible, unnoticeable, and plenty of other negative adjectives. If it’s not design, it breaks, doesn’t read or doesn’t work.

PowerPoint is not a graphic designer, and neither is Photoshop or the Macintosh

Personal taste (or rather, lack of taste) also have no place in graphic design, or visual communications.  In fact, it is destructive. Personal taste is exactly that, “personal” pertaining to one individual’s liking based on their life experience, culture, education or lack thereof. It has nothing to do with intelligently and effectively communicating with millions of people, who make up the demographic of a corporation, group, institution, band, shop, large or small. It has nothing to do with proper typography, legibility or professionalism versus amateurism. Personal taste may or may not have a place if one is decorating their kitchen since it’s personal to them, but even in that case, an interior decorator or architect would tell us otherwise.

Graphic design is the solution to visual communication problems through logic, strategy, research, years of training and study, the knowledge of design guidelines, rules, regulations and techniques.

Extensive knowledge, understanding and proper use of typography, photography, color, geometry, video, sound, music, negative space, design trends, culture, art history and the philosophies and psychology that go with each of these items, make for a memorable, pleasant and unique visual experience.

To follow the recommendations and counsel of a good team of designers is to win. To design it yourself, or act as an art director based on your personal taste, is to lose. You lose your design team, you lose your audience, and you miss an opportunity to be memorable, to stand out, or do something unique, which can inspire others.

A good leader is one who recognizes that his own core competency may not reach every branch of his company, and therefor, knows to default to his experts when searching for solutions to very specific problems.