Steve Jobs popularized the saying, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” Over the years, it seems that the saying has been stolen by many greats, from Pablo Picasso, to T. S. Eliot, to Jobs himself. We may not know exactly who uttered this saying first, but it doesn’t really matter; we don’t think the saying is good enough.

Here’s a better saying: “Greater artists improve.”

It’s the next level of the Picasso/Eliot/Jobs saying. When we are designing a website, building online software, or crafting an online marketing strategy, we take inspiration from what has been done before and improve it until it is best-in-class. We don’t strive to produce a good copy or a great steal, we strive to produce the best.

The obligatory Apple comparison

Since we’re improving on a famous Steve Jobs saying, let’s use Apple as an example. On a surface level, some think Apple’s success is thanks to its “innovative” nature. Others think Apple’s success is more directly tied to Jobs’ propensity to “steal” from others. But really, Apple’s rise to success had almost nothing to do with being truly innovative, and little to do with being full of ruthless idea-pirates.

The iPod, one of Apple’s early stupid-successful products, revolutionized how people carried and consumed music. Its sales really took off when iTunes revolutionized how we got music from the Internet into the beautiful little hard drive MP3 player. The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player and iTunes wasn’t the first outlet for purchasing MP3s. Apple’s later stupid-successful products, The iPhone and iPad, weren’t the first in their categories, either.

These products were all game-changers, but not because Apple invented these products and not because they stole and marketed them better than anyone else. Apple improved on them until they were best-in-class products.

Jobs created a company where the end user was the most important stakeholder. Every aspect of their products were tested, scrutinized, and improved until they offered the best experience for their customers. Millions of consumers have clearly seen this attention to detail and appreciated it enough to justify spending more money for more and more Apple products. As a result, Apple became the most valuable company on the planet.

Pump’s best-in-class approach

At Pump, we’re always focused on improving your online presence and offering the best online experience for your users. Our best-in-class web design, online software development, and online marketing services are born from our belief that greater artists improve. We always want you to look better to your customers online, to gain you more leads, to serve your customers better online, and to make your business more efficient through custom-built online software.

Our long-term relationships with our clients have allowed us to do this for them. You can read our case studies to see just a few examples of the results of our partnerships with our clients, and how we helped improve their businesses.

Once you’re done reading, get in touch with us to discuss how we can help you improve your online presence.

Or as some are calling it, Google’s "Mobilegeddon"

On April 21st Google is set to make a big change to the algorithm it uses to determine where your site is ranked in its mobile search results. This change is focused entirely on the mobile usability of your site and Google’s mobile search results. Since mobile devices have accounted for more and more of the share of total website visits, Google is making sure that its users have the best possible experience on their digital appendages by showing only sites in their search results that they deem to be mobile-friendly.

What does mobile-friendly mean to Google? Mobile-friendly is a pass/fail metric that you can easily measure for yourself using their Mobile-Friendly Test tool. If your site passes the mobile-friendly test, then your site is eligible to be seen within search results on a mobile device, but if not your site just plain won’t show on mobile searches.

Of course, your site’s position on mobile search results isn’t guaranteed to be stellar if your site "passes". Your site will be in competition with the other sites in your market that pass and are eligible to be shown on mobile search results. Through Google Webmaster Tools you can get more detailed information on the usability errors that affect your site and fix them to increase your site’s ability to rank well. Just some optimizations your site may need, even if it passes the mobile-friendly test are: using appropriate font sizes, touch elements sized and spaced properly, the absence of Flash on your pages, your website’s viewport being set for mobile devices, and the viewport being properly configured.

Responsive Design

All of the factors that Google will be looking for on your site after the "Mice" update can be taken care of with a well-crafted responsive site redesign. Responsive sites present your site in different layouts for different devices and it is the method recommended by Google to make your site mobile-friendly. A responsive site is the clear winner among your options for delivering a good mobile experience to your visitors because:

• It’s flexible. It adjusts to the screen size of all types of devices. When we design a responsive site, we have control over how it is displayed in each of these screen sizes and make design choices to benefit the viewer.
• The user experience is fantastic. Since each “breakpoint” is explicitly designed by our creative team, the user experience is fine-tuned to fit each device and how visitors interact with your site on those devices. On a mobile breakpoint buttons are usually larger to accommodate finger-focused navigation, navigation elements are structured to readily display the most important actions, and graphics are optimized to load quickly over a cellular data connection.
• It’s cost effective. Rather than building and maintaining multiple different versions of your sites, which was a popular approach when smartphones were novelties, you only need one version of the site. Content is posted only once making maintenance of your site far easier, and new features are easily implemented for all visitors no matter which device they use.
• Google recommends it. Many people experience the web through Google. Over 88% of users worldwide rely on Google as their primary search engine. If Google recommends it, there is a good reason for it; because they’ve figured out that it’s a good experience for their searchers.

The Best Time is Now

A responsive website has always been a good idea, but the urgency to give your users a responsive experience has never been higher. Luckily, the Google "Mice" update will be a realtime update, meaning that as soon as your site is made responsive and mobile-friendly Google will pick up on it and start allowing your site to rank in its search results again (unlike some other manual updates like Panda which are updated infrequently, meaning penalties last until the next manual update).

We recently completed responsive redesigns for some of our clients, and each site was approached in a slightly different way.

Green Drop’s recent full-site redesign included a responsive layout. We also added many new features and improvements to the way the site was designed and managed, since it is a core part of their business, but we made sure the mobile and tablet user experience is great, and that the site has every possible opportunity to rank well on mobile search.

For Tourism Canmore we made their existing design responsive without changing the look and feel of the site. Only the keenest visitors to the desktop version of the site will be able to notice a difference, while visitors on a smartphone or tablet will have a much better experience with the all-new layouts optimized for their device.

Every site and every client has different needs, and we can help get your site where it needs to be based on your needs. If you have questions about your site’s design and how it could be improved, get in touch with us and we will take the time to work with you to identify what can be done. We can help you right now with "Mobilegeddon" looming, and in the future to help grow and improve your online presence.

What is CASL Consent?

CASL defines two types of consent; express and implied. Even within our offices we’ve had many discussions about what each type of consent means and how it will apply once CASL comes into full effect. We’re sure you’ve probably had these same discussions on what consent is and how it applies to your practices, and you’ve likely also heard differing explanations and opinions on how it should apply to you.

We fear what we don’t understand. So, as an addition to our previous post on  Ensuring CASL Compliance Using MailChimp, we want to take a moment to help you understand what consent is and how it applies to your email marketing efforts.

Disclaimer: Although we have been in close contact with lawyers who are very familiar with the upcoming laws and their implications, we are not lawyers and nothing in this post should be considered as legal advice. For advice on legislation compliance, please consult with a lawyer.

From CTRC: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/infograph3.htm

Express Consent

The most desirable type of consent is express consent. These are the people who have put up their hands and said, “Yes! I would like to receive promotional emails from you!” Not only are you completely compliant with CASL when you send these people messages, they are also more likely to take action on the messages you send than recipients with only implied consent. These recipients have explicitly stated that they want updates and promotions from you, and you can send them updates forever (until they ask you to stop sending them).

Existing Express Consent is Valid

Luckily, if you obtained express consent before July 1st, 2014, your existing express consent is still valid. You need to be able to prove that you have this consent if it’s ever requested, so make sure you keep good records of who you obtained consent from, how you obtained it, and when. Ideally this is all managed in one place, and it makes sense for that one place to be MailChimp since that will be where you send your messages from, and it’s the place where your subscribers will unsubscribe if they choose to. You can also easily export your MailChimp lists at any time and those exports contain all of the information you need to show express consent, such as the date they confirmed their subscription (using double opt-in) and the IP address where they confirmed from.

Express consent is really the easier of the two consent types to understand. Implied consent can be a little more confusing.

Implied Consent

Implied consent allows you only a limited amount of time to send out messages. Like express consent, implied consent is only valid until a subscriber specifically states they no longer want to receive communications from you (unsubscribes, in the case of a newsletter managed through MailChimp). 

Consent can be considered implied in a few different scenarios:

1. If you have a current business relationship with the recipient and the message you send is relevant to their business, or their role or function within the business.
2. The recipient has specifically given you their electronic address and the message you send is relevant to their business, or their role or function within the business.
3. The recipient has conspicuously published their electronic address and the message you send is relevant to their business, or their role or function within the business.

NOTE: In the second and third scenarios above, you only have consent if these recipients haven’t stated that they don’t want to receive commercial messages at that address.

For newsletter purposes, ignore the last scenario. At first glance, it might seem that anyone who makes their email address public online is fair game to add to your newsletter, but this is definitely not the case. This allowance is likely to make it possible for people to send one-off emails with introductions, business proposals, etc. A great example would be where someone shares their email address on their LinkedIn profile and states that they are open to new business opportunities. This would allow recruiters to find a person’s email on their LinkedIn profile and send them a message about a potential new position without contravening CASL. 

MailChimp also has it’s own terms of use that are in some cases stricter than CASL. MailChimp only wants opted-in subscribers in their system, so that last scenario would be contradictory to MailChimp’s terms of use.

Implied Consent Expiration

Each type of implied consent has a slightly different expiration and you’ll need to be careful how you track and manage your records.

• If you have an existing business relationship with a recipient, and for two years after the business relationship ends, you have implied consent.
• If you received a request or inquiry from a recipient, you have 6 months of implied consent.

The intent behind implied consent in the second scenario is probably for you to be able to respond with relevant information related to their request or inquiry. Don’t abuse this, but use it as an opportunity to convert that recipient into a subscriber.

Transition Period for Implied Consent until 2017 – in some cases

There’s a section of the new law ( 66(b), if you’re curious) that gives us a bit of breathing room until July 1st, 2017. If any of the implied consent scenarios apply to a recipient before July 1st, 2014, or your previous business relationship includes the sending of commercial messages before July 1st, 2014 (such as people you have sent a message to in the past and haven’t unsubscribed), then you have implied consent until July 1st, 2017. The expiration of implied consent doesn’t apply until that date, regardless of how long the legislation states. 

But wait! You can’t just assume implied consent all the way through until 2017. You must have had this implied consent with a subscriber before July 1st, 2014 in order to safely use it until 2017. CRTC posted this clarification rather close to the July 1st deadline, but in it they made it clear that after July 1st, 2014, you need to start being compliant with the new legislation. 

Some examples to really paint the picture of how this might work for your business during the transition period:

• If you had an existing business relationship with a recipient before July 1st, 2014, then you can assume implied consent until 2017. 
• If you sent a MailChimp campaign to a list of recipients before July 1st, 2014, then you can assume implied consent  until 2017.
• If someone makes an inquiry to you on July 2nd, 2014, you only have implied consent for 6 months, not until 2017!

Use the Transition Period Wisely and Convert!

Make sure you use this time wisely. Use it to convert as many of your subscribers as possible to express consent. Dream up some really creative strategies to persuade your customers to voluntarily sign up for your list and obtain full express consent. Make sure you are clear on the benefits of subscribing to your list and provide them with quality messages that deliver those benefits. You want them to feel like part of an exclusive membership that they can’t help but want to be a part of.

Some benefits you might want to highlight:

• quality informative content related to the products and services you offer, such as important news in your industry that may affect your subscribers, product care tips, product updates, new offerings to solve your subscribers’ needs, etc.
• notice of upcoming sales and promotions
• coupon codes for products and services
• subscriber prize draws
• subscriber contests

If you’ve been practicing converting people from implied consent to express consent for the three years leading up to 2017, you’ll have a wealth of experience and tactics to use to attract people to voluntarily sign up for your newsletters.

We hope this article has cleared up the consent confusion and you have no more reason to fear what consent is or how to use it properly to turn your newsletter into a powerful marketing tool, all while staying compliant with CASL. If you would like help with your email marketing, we’re always here for you,  just get in touch!

A helpful primer on CASL and staying compliant using MailChimp

July 1st, 2014 is a big day. Not only is it Canada Day, but the new Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) is also coming into effect. CASL is widely regarded as one of the strictest anti-spam laws in the world. This new law is great for consumers who are tired of receiving spam emails in their inbox, but it’s turning into a cause for concern for many businesses who don’t understand all of the implications and how they relate to their email practices.

Understandably, we have had many conversations with clients who are worried about what all of this means for their email newsletter practices. Fines are substantial and the details surrounding many aspects of the law are vague. Our clients are all wonderful people who don’t engage in spammy practices, but we have been spending time these past few months helping them ensure their practices are on the right side of the law to mitigate their concerns.

We want to help you as well. Here’s how you can use  MailChimp to ensure that you are collecting and sending emails properly so you aren’t bit by the new laws.

Disclaimer: Although we have been in close contact with lawyers who are very familiar with the upcoming laws and their implications, we are not lawyers and nothing in this post should be considered as legal advice. If you have concerns about these new regulations, make sure you get proper legal advice before implementing an email campaign or changes to an existing email campaign related to the new anti-spam laws.

CASL Requirements

First, a bit about the CASL requirements. The CASL applies to commercial electronic messages (CEMs), which are messages sent to an electronic address (such as an email address, a direct message sent through social media or chat, or a similar account).

There are three main requirements for sending a CEM:

1. You need consent to send the CEM,
2. you need to provide identification information, and
3. you need to provide an unsubscribe mechanism for your CEMs.

Consent

Consent can be implied or expressly given. Express consent is the preferred type of consent and ensures that you are acting within the new laws. Luckily, it’s very easy to obtain and later prove this consent using MailChimp.

MailChimp already requires the preferred form of opt-in consent from your subscribers which makes it easy for you to later prove this consent. MailChimp’s “double opt-in” signup process means that two steps need to be taken by the subscriber before they are added to the list.

1. The subscriber provides their contact information on a form or newsletter sign up page.
2. After submitting their information, they receive an email asking them to click a link to confirm their subscription.

Only after clicking the confirmation link are they considered a subscriber and able to be emailed as part of your campaigns. This double opt-in process has many benefits over simply adding the email addresses of all of your clients to a list and starting to send them newsletters.

• Your campaign’s unsubscribe rates are more likely to stay low. MailChimp works to protect their business model by ensuring their servers don’t get flagged for spam, so they review accounts with high unsubscribe or complaint rates, and will potentially suspend accounts if they feel these metrics are too high.
• It’s possible that someone’s email address can end up on your list without their knowledge. With double opt-in each subscriber receives a confirmation message before you can send to them, so it’s unlikely that people will be surprised to find out they are on your list.
• When a new subscriber clicks on the link in the confirmation email they receive as part of step two of the opt-in process, MailChimp logs the date and time that the subscriber opted-in to your list, as well as the IP address of the device they used to confirm their subscription. If needed, you are always able to export this information at a later date to prove that you received express consent.

** NOTE: CASL states that subscribing to receive messages must be done on an opt-in basis, rather than an opt-out basis. The subscriber must take a positive action to be added to your list. For example, a pre-checked box on an account signup form saying, “Yes! Please sign me up for the mailing list” would go against the new anti-spam laws. The same form design would be fine, as long as they have to click the box to be signed up, rather than click the box to avoid being signed-up.

UPDATE: We’ve written a follow-up post detailing more about each type of consent and how they may be used. Read Clearing up the Consent Confusion.

Identification Information

You need to provide identification information in your CEMs. To be completely safe, ensure that all of this information is included in each message you send:

• Your business name,
• a mailing address that will be valid for at least 60 days after sending your message, and
• your website URL.

An email address or telephone number can be helpful as well, if this information is not readily available on your website. Basically, if a recipient of your message has any desire to contact you, they need to be able to do that without too much investigative work.

This basic contact information is already required by MailChimp for each list you create. Make sure that the contact information you provide is always valid for at least 60 days from the date you send a mailout, and make sure it is included in your message template. MailChimp allows you to quickly enter this information in your messages using merge tags such as *|LIST:ADDRESS|*. Pop that tag in the footer of your template or message design and MailChimp will replace that tag with your list’s address automatically.

Unsubscribe Mechanism

The last requirement is that you provide recipients with a straightforward way of unsubscribing from your messages. It has to be free of charge and requests to be unsubscribed must be taken care of right away (within 10 business days).

Unsubscribing is a simple process with MailChimp. MailChimp manages all aspects of the unsubscribe process quickly, so you don’t need to worry about managing this aspect of your campaign. Just make sure you include the *|UNSUB|* merge tag in a link somewhere in your email (usually the footer, along with your contact information and website links). Like the address merge tag, this tag will be replaced with a link that allows subscribers to unsubscribe from your list with one click, and state the reason why they are unsubscribing. This can be helpful to determine why people no longer want to hear from you and allow you to strategize ways to provide them more value.

Don’t make it a chore for people to unsubscribe. Make sure the link is not hidden, buried within other content, or so small that it can’t be read. This has always been a best practice, and people who want out but can’t figure out how to are not valuable subscribers, anyway. Holding people hostage to your email list is just not nice, and on July 1, 2014, it will become illegal.

Breathe… We’ll be okay

The purpose of this law is to combat spammy marketing practices, and we think it’s unlikely that a company sending out updates via their own newsletter will be targeted by the CRTC for contravening CASL. Nothing in CASL is entirely new, either. Just about everything prescribed by the new Canadian laws is already considered best practice for sending out newsletters, which we have always strived to work within for ourselves and for our clients.

We hope that this article is useful to you in the coming months, but we know that every scenario and application of a newsletter differs slightly. Using a combination of design and custom applications we are making sure our existing clients are compliant with these new laws, and we’d be happy to help you as well.  Please get in touch with us if you’d like to discuss how we can help you navigate these new laws.

You can also learn more about CASL and read frequently-asked questions at the Government of Canada’s website: http://fightspam.gc.ca/

More people are recognizing that there is a lot of value in social media and content marketing, but often they don’t fully understand these tools as marketing vehicles. Many of the people I talk to seem to think social media and content marketing are so great because they are toll-free highways to exposure, search engine dominance, celebrity, and riches. At the same time, they think that paying for any sort of exposure is a waste of time or some form of cheating. They’re convinced that getting the social/blog/content formula right means they should never need to spend any money on online marketing.

But “paid” doesn’t need to be a dirty word, because “free” doesn’t mean free and “paid” isn’t cheating.

“Free” doesn’t mean free

Just because you don’t have to spend any money to create a Facebook page, Twitter profile, blog post, or Google+ profile, doesn’t mean results come for free. It takes tons of effort, creativity, time, expertise, and insight to create and execute a proper social media and content marketing plan.

Before you even type one character into a tweet, there is a lot of planning that needs to go into finding your audience and understanding what their needs are to be sure you aren’t wasting time. You don’t want to waste your time, but more importantly, you never want to waste the time of your audience. First, you need to invest some time observing your audience. Where do they spend time online? What do they like doing offline, besides the obvious things that are closely related to the product or service you offer to them? What stage of life are they in? How much money do they make in a year?

With the answers to those questions you then need to start thinking about how you can use that information to help them. If you’re a bank and you want to attract young families, you can create a monthly email newsletter that provides them with quick tips and services to save them time and spend more of it with their children, for example. If you’re a realtor you could create an official definitive checklist of all of the things your audience will need to accomplish on moving day, such as calling the utility company, the cable company, ordering pizza for their “free” labour (see what I did there), etc.

Finally, you need to create a schedule and stay in front of them. You need a carefully considered content calendar, established tone of voice, and a suite of tools to make it as easy as possible for you to deliver. You need to brainstorm content ideas, things to write and tweet and Facebook about. You need enough to satisfy the schedule in the content calendar you’ve created.

All of this takes time, energy, and creativity. I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that time, energy, and creativity don’t grow on trees. And if something doesn’t grow on trees, it isn’t free. That’s what my parents taught me, anyway.

“Paid” isn’t cheating

After all of that hard work, hopefully you now realize that there is no dishonour in paying to put the value you’ve crafted in front of the people you created it for. It isn’t cheating to place ads on a site where your audience likes to get their entertainment news, browse for vintage dolls, or share their hatred over the way Apple changed the icons on their beloved phones. Actually, it’s pretty smart, and it shows you know your audience well enough to offer them the things they wanted in places they never thought to look for them. And they probably didn’t even realize they wanted those things until you showed them.

If you’ve taken the time to understand your audience enough and you’ve put the things you’ve crafted for them in the places they will find it, then your content will do well. You should be absolutely confident by this point that what you are doing is actually serving them, so why should you feel dirty for using your marketing dollars to give it to them? You should really be feeling like the most generous person in the world.

Here’s the thing: you are not buying “Likes”, clicks or +1s, you are buying the opportunity to earn these things at a faster pace than you would have if you worked to earn them organically, one by one, without any monetary intervention. There is nothing wrong with that.

Now that you know deep down you are spending that money to serve the right people, at the right place and time, you can eliminate all guilt you may have been feeling. All that research you did, the time you took to understand who you were trying to serve, that’s going to show in what you’ve produced for them. So get it out there any way you can. You want to build your audience by exposing them to your genius philanthropy, and if you have to—especially at the beginning of a campaign—pay for that exposure. They’re gonna love you for it.

“Loving theatre, music, movies and friends on patios.”

When her friends are with her anywhere else, she doesn’t love them. At least not as much. She gets antsy and wants to leave to dream up the next glorious thing she is going to post online. She thinks about snapping some pictures of old buildings and the candid moments of the passersby to share with her online friends. The hilarious conversation she just had with her patio friends is quickly tweeted, to share the good times they have. The moments will live on forever online while they quickly fade from her memory.

When she’s not on patios she logs in and grazes on all of her past glories, all the posts she has shared where she is on patios or thinking about patios or leaving patios. The amazing meals she had and who she shared them with. She reads them in less than 140 characters and relives them as if they were fresh experiences.

She sees the posts of others sometimes. Everyone living their dreams doing what they love and making the money they never could have if they stayed in their corporate job. She is one of them now.

“Formerly in a boring office life, now living life in Leslieville.”

It’s a place with a historical appeal. The houses were the houses of the gardeners and brickmakers that worked for the elite generations ago. They all left when the work dried up and the industrial plants rained pollution down on the neighbourhood. They left because it was downwind of the sewage treatment plant and it made no financial sense to put up with it anymore.

Later, young couples would fawn over the huge, majestic old trees and thick bushes that guarded old brick homes and decide to move in. They erected cafes and restaurants and cute little shops and called it home. They laid patios. The pollution dissipated, but the smell still returns when the wind blows the right way.

She read a book one Saturday when she was an accountant in Cubicletown. The author was telling her how she could make all the money she needed in 4 hours each week. He wasn’t special—he said so himself—so why couldn’t she do it? Why couldn’t she just make that giant leap, move somewhere where cubicles didn’t exist, and find her peace?

There are no offices in Leslieville, but there are lots of patios, so she moved there.

Her friends and family were all worried for her. She could tell by the practical questions they asked her, with worry poorly veiled on their faces. They didn’t come right out and tell her they thought she was being romantic. They were thinking things like:

“Life doesn’t work like that.”

“We all want to leave and be artists, but we all have to eat.”

“You’re crazy.”

But they never said any of these things.

Apparently, she left her old life. She left to seek adventure and fulfillment in the creative side of town. At the beginning she used her meager savings to pay the bills and spend time in coffee shops, clicking and pecking away at her laptop, altering the colour profile of the photos she had taken earlier in the day ever so slightly. Captured moments needed the best possible colour profile to show the emotion behind the subject. It was so important that it usually took her three no-fat lattes to get it right. Secretly, she took joy in how creative she looked to everyone, taking for herself a table that could seat four. Emptying the contents of her laptop bag she settled in for really demanding, really fulfilling, really creative work.

Now she serves the lattes. She is far more fulfilled being near all the kinds of creative people in Leslieville. She is one of them now.

Her social media bios all show a bright colour profile, beaming yellow and gold. She’s fiddled with them a lot to make them look that way. She needs the best possible profiles to show the emotion behind the subject she’s created in her mind.

For all of her nudging and no-fat lattes the photos she alters minutely all seem to come out the same. Filters and saturation selectors applied to the photos bring out the same cold colour profile, blue and lonely.

The Ugly Couch

Many of us place an inordinate amount of meaning within inanimate objects. For example, my wife was given her grandmother’s horrendously ugly, inhumanely uncomfortable couch when she passed away. It was a sort of dirty brown tweed that kind of folded into a bed, although there was no way I would offer it as a place for friends to sleep. Unless they really enjoyed sleeping on the types of furniture displayed in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds.

In every possible way and every function it was designed for, it was horrible. But my wife loved it.

We moved that couch to way too many places that weren’t the dump. From her mother’s house to her apartment and finally to our matrimonial home, where it stayed in the basement and was used maybe twice before we needed the space it occupied and it finally made its trip to the dump.

For me it was a simple decision to get rid of an ugly and unnecessary furniture item, but for my poor wife it was a painful separation from something which held immeasurable meaning for her. The ugly couch brought fond memories to her, warm memories of her loving grandparents and all the time she spent with them. It meant enough to her that it deserved a tearful goodbye before it took its last trip. If you showed her a pattern matching the material the couch was made of it would awaken very deep and meaningful positive emotions in her.

Dirty Words

We can also give more-than-deserved meaning to words. A Globe and Mail article reporting on an unfortunate oversight by Coca-Cola shows that even one word taken out of context can unwittingly invoke a negative emotional response, and ultimately affect how people perceive your brand.

A Canadian promotion was meant to encourage consumers to have fun with words from both of our official languages by printing a variety of English and French words under the caps of bottles of vitamin water. The caps were designed to be collected and arranged into humorous sentences, the idea being that anglophones would use French words and francophones would use English ones.

When people found the French words “[you] retard” and “douche” under their caps, they became offended by these words which meant something very different to them in English. In French these words mean “slow” and “shower”; innocuous words safely used in French homes every day by children without fear of having their mouths washed out avec du savon.

Much like the ugly couch held no special meaning to me, some English-speaking citizens may find no offensive meaning in these words. Unfortunately the woman quoted in the article found them especially offensive, because, “she has a younger sister who is developmentally delayed.” She was also quoted as saying that her father has forbidden use of the word “douche” in their home because, at least to him, “It’s equivalent to the ‘N’ word.”

This example isn’t meant to scare you into being overly sensitive to every possible interpretation or emotional response, only to illustrate the power of meaning in something as small as a single word.

The Meaning Behind it All

Logos, graphic design, tone of voice, and more are expertly crafted for a reason: to make sure the right meaning is planted in the minds of those who interact with your brand. Stressing about which shade of blue to go with, the synonym to best fit the sentence, the right tone of voice for that tweet, and which magazine to run an ad in may seem like we’re taking things too far, worrying too much.

When the right people are responsible for the success of your branding efforts, they treat it with the seriousness it deserves. Everything we work with has meaning, and every aspect of your brand deserves great care in ensuring that the right meaning is encouraged in the minds of your audience.

The commodity players will assign a value to those words, based on how many readable words you can cram into a specific area, how much competition there is for those words, or how much a market will reasonably bear before deciding that word is too expensive.

A fiction book which costs $19.95 US / $21.95 Canada could have 100,000 words in it. You paid (enough) attention in math class growing up, so you know that each word is worth $0.0001995 USD ($0.0002195 CAD). Right?

Wrong.

Words are just the construct and have absolutely no value until they are crafted into a message. Some words are worth millions in an international ad campaign, some are worth priceless memories crafted in a moving story, some are worth your life itself in a crucial moment.

A gigantic raw diamond is worth millions and nothing at the same time, until it is expertly cut, polished, and presented. It is laboured over for hours with an immense attention to detail, because at any point it could be rendered worthless. In the wrong hands, it is a chunk of rock. Words are also worth everything and nothing until they are expertly placed, trimmed, focused, and presented. They must be properly arranged, they must be reserved for the right reader, they must paint a picture. They need the right person to bring out their impact.

Words are imagination and potential and profit and hope and emotion and everything.

I shared the SEO Bookmarklet with everyone at SEOmoz through a YOUmoz blog post because it is a great community filled with a ton of knowledgeable SEO practitioners, and I thought this could help them in their day-to-day work as much as it has helped me. The post generated so much discussion and interest that it was promoted to the main SEOmoz blog where even more great feedback was generated.

Thank You!

So thank you Mozzers! I’m glad you love the bookmarklet and thank you for all of your input.

It doesn’t have to stop there, though. If you have any input into features for the SEO Bookmarklet let me know!

Here is a video I came across on Google+ (connect with me there) and he had me laughing and thinking. Fair warning: he drops a lot of expletives.

Gary’s Site

Facebook buys Gowalla From CNN Money

I once submitted a poem to a publisher of poems who only accepted “the best works”. Those works were incorporated into an anthology and the anthology was offered to those who were published “at a special price”. In addition to the anthology the creators of the poems were offered special deals on custom plaques, bookmarks, and a bunch of other items featuring their poems. I was about 12 years old and my mother was proud that I was published, so she purchased both the anthology and a plaque featuring my poem.

…Or, How to Make Money Building Apps

There is a business model for this. Not marketing to the public, but marketing to those who want to be marketing to the public. If you want to make money building apps, market yourself as builder of iPhone apps for those who want an iPhone app.

I think this is about the only opportunity people have these days to create apps for iPhone (specifically, but possibly mobile apps in particular). I’m not sure that a business model based on creating and selling apps is sustainable 99.9% of the time. I think most people have the mentality that an app is an app; it’s a minor part of their lives. In the best case it’s an entertaining gadget that distracts them for a bit. For a lot of people that doesn’t seem to even be worth 99 cents.

The Other Option is to Build a Valuable Service, With App Access

So I had a look at the most popular and best-selling apps in the App Store (excluding games, they are a whole other beast), and a pattern revealed itself to me. The apps that people download (and sometimes pay for) the most are simply access points to a service that provides them with some value. The app itself provides value by giving them mobile access to a service that provides value. In most cases the mobile access is not a source of revenue for the service and the app is free.

Look at Facebook’s business model. A large part of it is selling advertising. On the desktop version of their website users see ads in just about every page they are on. On the iPhone app they see none. To get the iPhone app users don’t pay anything.

Look at Evernote. It is a freemium service model (free basic service, paid premium service). The app is free, but advanced features are unlocked in the app if you have a premium subscription.

I Hear You, Market

Personally, I believe that most of the apps that I create provide some value. Whether that value is a mobile budgeting tool, an iPhone Bible tool, or a basic navigation tool themed to match a game that I (and millions of others) enjoy, these apps all provide some value. I feel that the value is a meager $0.99 for each. For some I feel it is a little higher.

But the market doesn’t agree. They would rather have free mobile access to a valuable service they are happy to pay for. Fair enough. The upside is that it is much easier to effectively market a valuable online service than it is to effectively market a product that nets $0.70 in profit for each purchase. It can be very difficult to market an app in a profitable way with only $0.70 available to try to acquire a customer.

My advice? Don’t focus on creating a remarkable app if the market believes that generally apps are throw-away distractions. Focus instead on creating a remarkable service that people find valuable. Then give them mobile access.

This year I have decided to take part in Movember with my wonderful colleagues at Apis Design. The goal is to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues, namely prostate cancer initiatives through the Movember Foundation and Prostate Cancer Canada.

Help Me Out

I will post my progress over the course of the month here on my blog and at my Mo Space. You can help by checking out my Mo Space and tweeting about it, liking it on Facebook, rating my page, and/or donating to the cause.

You can also follow the Apis Design team progress at the Apis blog (here’s our announcement post).

What Movember is, from the Movember FAQs page:

Movember is the month formerly known as November, where men and women across the globe join together raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues. Men grow a Mo (moustache) for 30 days to become walking, talking billboards, for our men’s health causes – specifically prostate cancer.

Thanks for your support!

Let the Mo Grow!

At the end he returns to his home, flowers in hand. His wife answers the door, sees him looking apologetic as he holds up his fistful of wildflowers. Underneath his pleading smile, "Drive until you’re ready to talk." displays on the screen. She shuts the door on him, but instantly opens it back up with an affectionate, forgiving smile on her face.

Then, and only then, does the advertisement mention what product is being sold. "Golf" is displayed on the screen, followed by the VW logo.

Featuring the Product Without Data

"That commercial is genius!" I exclaimed to my fiancé. They didn’t tell me about the car’s fuel economy. They didn’t play up it’s German heritage or progressive styling. They painted me a picture and put me inside an experience; an experience I related to.

The first thing the poor man-in-the-wrong does after his apparent argument with his wife is jump in his car to cool off and to think. Subconsciously this ad tells us a few things without actually coming out and telling us:

• The car is polished and comfortable. It is the man-haven he retreats to, to get away and do some self-reflection.
• The car is economical. In these times of high gas prices, he isn’t concerned about driving out to the country. He just gets in and goes.
• The car probably has a great sound system. More subtly, we get the feeling that the music we are listening to is the music he is listening to through his car’s sound system.

Sell The Emotion

Some of the commercials I enjoy the most paint an emotional story and show how their product or service was integral in the story. The product was the solution or an important vehicle used to arrive at that solution. The brand was able to make the product personal and create a subtle emotional link without forcing it upon me with stats and figures and awards. Some distinguishing characteristics of the product are integrated so subtly that you don’t even consciously realize it.

Emotions are powerful motivating factors in marketing. You are providing far more than a product or service. You are providing peace of mind, or increasing your customer’s comfort level, or making them look better in the eyes of their peers, or bringing back nostalgic memories, or making them more productive and allowing them more time with their families.

Your customers are not always looking for your product. Sometimes they are looking for the feeling your solution creates.

Here’s the commercial on YouTube so you can see it for yourself:

More of my Favourite Emotional Commercials

Google Search. This ad tells a story using only background sounds and Google search results pages. It takes us on a journey of love found abroad by an adventurous young man while showing us all the features and benefits of Google.

Apple FaceTime. The product is not about the technology or the future of communication, it is about how we communicate now.

Mad Men Kodak Slide Carousel. Don Draper introduces the emotional bond of the product by saying, "Nostalgia; it’s delicate, but potent."

• Helping someone understand something better.
• Brushing the snow off of your partner’s/parent’s/roomate’s car in the morning.
• Making your boss look good.
• Helping with your co-worker’s work load.
• Picking up a piece of garbage that you did not throw there.
• Helping others going through challenging times.
• Sending a gift or letter to a sick friend.
• etc., etc.

These are not gigantic life-changing actions, rather they are small, simple gestures that show that you care about another, that show you care enough to try to make their lives just the tiniest bit easier or more enjoyable.

The TWKM logo reflects my belief that life can be better, and that we can make life better. I discovered the basis of the logo in the back of my mother’s well-worn Bible. There was a page that showed Biblical symbols, some referring to the Trinity, some referring to symbols that early Christians used to secretly identify each other when they were being hunted by the Romans.

Of the multiple pages of symbols, the one that really seemed to resonate with me was a simple circle that had a line drawn vertically through it. The left side was colored black, and the right left unfilled. It symbolized Good and Evil.

I loved the simplicity of the symbol, and how much it stated with so little embellishment. But I saw in the symbol a sad stalemate. Good vs. Evil, static, with no change. They both existed there in a state in which neither side prevailed.

While this may be true and both Good and Evil exist in equal measure, I redrew the symbol to be more dynamic, showing that Good can overcome Evil. That there can be more Good than Evil. Basically, that we can make life better.

The TWKM logo is built off of the idea of that symbol, but it says so much more. The curved divider between the two sections shows that Good is forcing the boundary and encroaching on Evil’s territory. It is stressing it and actively working against it. By Good’s small and simple gestures and actions, it is making headway and growing, stealing space from Evil.

I love the simplicity of the TWKM logo, but I love more the complex message it conveys. This simple logo serves as a mini-manifesto that I strive to live and do business by. I work to make this logo a truth in my personal life by helping others in any way I can. With Gadgets by TWKM, I also work to make this logo a truth by not only make lives easier through gadgets and tools designed to simplify or streamline our lives, but also through donating to charities who are working to make life better for the people they support.

More and more lately I am coming to realize the value and importance of working within a team and finding the right people to fill that team. I am a quick-learner and capable of doing most anything reasonably well, so I have spent a lot of my life trying to do things myself. I usually do a pretty good job, too, no matter what it is.

Even though I can get a decent result doing it myself, it usually takes me four times as long and is not quite near the quality that a professional or someone much more suited to the task could accomplish. Beyond that, when it is all said and done, I have no one to share my success or failure with, no other ideas to consider and implement, no other skill sets and knowledge to learn and grow from.

I have built websites, iPhone apps, conceptualized businesses, painted, woodworked, fixed my own car, etc. and I do a good job because I am proud of the work I do, but the things I have built have been limited by my skill sets, my mindsets, my capacity and patience to learn a new skill (as well as the apparent future value of expending the time to learn that skill), and my time. A team with the right people in it destroys a lot of those limits.

The point is, you can only do what you can do. You can only learn and grow from others.

Any product should be a well-oiled system (be it a business, electronic device, website etc.) and you need experts working on each component for that to become true. You are probably not an expert of each of those components. Sorry.

Sure, you could probably build it near as good as them. You could probably do it cheaper (although, your time IS worth money). You may not have to split the fruits of your labour with anyone, but you also won’t have anyone to split the crappy bits with, either.

As Hugh MacLeod says, seek out the exceptional minds. Pay them well, inspire them, work with them. A lot more can be built a lot more quickly with a team of people, than you can do yourself.

Those companies that have recognized this already are hugely successful. They are speaking to employees and customers on levels that resonate with them. It all starts at the top, at the genesis of the business and the people involved in the business. I remember reading that the most important thing in any business is it’s Mission Statement, which communicates the core values that the business operates from.

I’ve seen a lot of Mission Statements that really miss the point, and I don’t think that the Mission Statement is the first step, I think it is the product of the first step. Before you craft a Mission Statement you have to think long and hard about what the company you want to form believes in, which will most likely be very strongly tied to what you believe in. Some of the theories I am really taking note of lately come from Simon Sinek and Dan Pink. In a TED talk that Simon Sinek presented, he said that people don’t work with you or buy from you because you have a better or cheaper product, or a product that fits their specific goals for that product. They do these things because they believe what you believe.

I think that most people believe in something. Whether it is something spiritual and transcendent or something tied to survival, we all believe in something. Some believe in the pursuit of fortune and fame, others in family, others in philanthropy. No matter what it is you believe, it is important that you are surrounded by others who believe these things as well. It may not be a good match to have a capitalistic business hire philanthropic employees as their goals may be too different, for example.

So before you craft your Mission Statement, think about what it is you believe and what belief you want your company’s actions to be measured against. Don’t stop there, though, because a Mission Statement only COMMUNICATES what your core values are. You still have to ACT ACCORDING TO YOUR CORE VALUES. If your personal core values are the foundation of you as a person, then you Mission Statement is the foundation of your business. Always remember that actions speak far louder than words, and employees and customers can both pick up on a company (or person) who says they stand for one thing, but their actions don’t confirm that they do.

At my worst I think I pretty much boycotted social media because I feel that it can be a bit of a misnomer. That’s a discussion for a later time, but the point is that this book really solidified a full social media strategy for myself and my realtor mother who I will be helping develop a social media strategy.

I would definitely recommend checking out Gary’s book. It discusses the importance of building a personal brand, as well as a lot of tips and tools to get started. I haven’t read all of it yet, but from what I’m seeing so far, it is a good book for beginners and the more experienced alike. It would definitely help you build a social media strategy, and give you some ideas to get started.