Recently, there has been some buzz surrounding cinemagraphs; still photos with some animated areas. Many people may see cinemagraphs as just works of art/creativity but I see a future where they are used by businesses to introduce their products or employees online.

Below are some examples of cinemagraphs. Click on the images to visit their sources:

1) Could wine and beverage companies be using cinemagraphs to make their products look more appealing on their websites? I bet they can!

2) Can’t grocery shops be using cinemagraphs on their websites to show the freshness of their groceries? I bet they can!

3) Can’t fashion houses be using cinematics to reveal their latest designs? I bet they can!

4) What about phone companies? Can they use a cinemagraph like the one below and say something like, “You just can’t stop using it”? I bet they can!

5) And I bet make-up artists and/ cosmetic sellers can have a cinematic similar to the one below and have a thought bubble over the woman’s head, saying something like, “The new Sociatic lip-stick is fantastic! Henry will love this!” and then there’ll be a link to that exact lip-stick?

Okay, maybe I was a little biased with the “Sociatic lip-stick” thing but I guess you got my point.

I don’t believe there is an easier way to use cinemagraphs all over a site that carries thousands of products. Just one cinemagraph on the homepage or one in each product category might work well.

If it is used to introduce every new product a manufacturer makes,

1) Will it be more sharable across social media? Yes!

2) Will it appeal to people more than just using regular photos? Yes!

3) Will it increase sales? Maybe! Just like video, I don’t see it being a miracle invention! You need to be creative with it in order to get the best out of it but I trust that it will be a better tool than regular (still) images.

So, I have got some work for you to do. Share this post across the social web and let’s see your friends reactions. Do you believe cinemagraphs will be used in future online marketing? Do you think it should? I will like to know what you also think.

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to the RSS feed so that you don’t miss future articles. In my next post, I will be sharing a free landing page template with you. Don’t miss it!

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Do you know that communication can make or break your business? Many people think business communication is easy but it really isn’t. There is more to it than just words.

Communication is an essential tool for building your business and brand online. It actually has a direct relationship with content development and content marketing.

If you have an email list and social media community, you’ll need to know how to communicate with them.

In order to communicate effectively, there are nine questions you’ll need to ask yourself:

1. Who is the message for?
2. What relationship do you have with your target audience?
3. What is the actual message?
4. Will your message be useful to your audience?
5. Is the timing right?
6. What barriers are you likely to encounter?
7. What communication channel will you use?
8. What feedback are you likely to get?
9. How will you work with the feedback?

Basically, there are 4 characters involved in the communication process; the sender, the receiver, the message itself and channels.

Many people assume communication as a system that only has to do with words

The roles of the sender include:

• Developing the appropriate message/content for his audience: I once came across a college Twitter account with an update that said something like, “Get 1,000 followers in not time. Click here” or so. Please don’t do this. I was shocked when I saw it.

• Identifying channels for content distribution. Channels include: e-mail, social media and video sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, etc., whitepapers, ebooks, etc.

• Identifying barriers that may hinder the purpose of the message. Likely barriers include email filtering (to prevent spam), nature of your list (e.g. demographics, income levels, etc.) and language.

• Analyzing response: The kind of feedback you get will let you know how effective your message was. This is an essential part that is actively being considered by both new and old businesses.

As the sender, you have many tasks on your hand and you should make sure to follow through the above roles if you want to be effective. For example, once you identify appropriate channels for certain types of messages, you’ll not have to worry about what type of message to communicate and how to deliver it.

The receiver’s roles include:

• Consuming message
• Sharing message to other people who may be interested
• Giving Feedback
• Doing any other thing the message asks them to do.

The receiver has the magic wand when it comes to sharing and acting on your content.

Your message could be any of these types:

• Newsy
• Sales pitch
• Survey/feedback request
• Tips/tutorials

Messages can serve the following purposes:

• Inform
• Educate
• Convince

Messages can be converted to the following formats:

• Video
• Audio
• Document files; .PDF, .doc, .txt, etc.
• Graphic; .gif, .jpg, .png, etc.
• Regular text/ undocumented text
• Regular speech

Channels are paths for communication; email, social media, telephone, TV, Radio, etc..

The channels I currently use to communicate Sociatic are Q&A sites, Twitter, LinkedIn, Junta42, Social Media Today, Bizsugar, Delicious, Google Buzz, blogs (via this blog and via guest posting on other blogs) etc.

When you identify and recognize the communication process like this, you can easily convince and convert your leads into sales.

Let me know if I left something out.

Customers follow or ‘unfollow’ brands because of their experience with them. They follow brands because of their faith in that brand. Because they know what they will always be getting from that brand. Because that brand has a unique spot that serves the industry in which they find themselves.

Apple is followed because of their revolutionary and innovative products. Mercedes is followed because customers are assured of luxury and quality engineering. CNN is followed because they are first in news. The list of unique, remarkable brands goes on and on.

Now let’s shift focus to you. What makes your brand unique? Before people will follow your brand, you need to show them something they can have faith in. Something that is difficult to find in your competitor’s products. Something that will stand for your brand; be your brand’s definition.

There are a few ways you can achieve this. One way is to be unique in a remarkable way. Creating a remarkably unique brand image helps you dodge most of the competition. Facebook understood this when they started. They didn’t want to be just another social network, they wanted to be more and they succeeded.

There are millions of businesses trying to copy each other. The sad thing is, most of them die fast. Most become bankrupt because they spend lots of money to advertise their ‘common’ products; products just like the others. This is no way to win. Something has to be different about you.

Building a remarkable brand takes lots of creativity and innovation. Counterfeiters know this, that’s why they spend money producing product look-alikes instead of investing that same money into their own product ideas.

If you want to run a ‘monopoly’ in today’s marketplace, build a unique brand. If you can get your customers to have faith in your brand’s attributes, you have a ‘monopoly’. Apple is running a ‘monopoly’ in their marketplace because they are remarkably unique in everything they do. What can you do to make your business a ‘monopoly’?

The second way you can build a faithful customer base is to treat all customers equally. Treat the $1 item buyers the same way as $1,000 item buyers. When you do this, people become more attached to you and your business will grow. A $1 item buyer could bring you a $1,000 item buyer through word of mouth so why don’t you treat them equally eh?

The third way you can bring in faithful customers is to be consistent at what you are best known for.  If you are remarkable, stay remarkable. Start with innovation and continue with innovation. Complacency is not accepted in business because your customers and competitors are watching you. In fact, your customers are watching you and your competitors at the same time. Once they notice you have stopped evolving, they will move on to the other company that has evolved.

Consistency builds faith.

How do you know if you have faithful customers?

Your customers have the best answer to this question. They don’t have to tell you in words. Their actions are there to assess yourself.

5 ways you can tell if you have faithful customers are:

• They refer other customers to you
• They give you feedback about your products
• They buy from you for the second time…third and fourth times …again and again.
• They defend your brand when people spread negative rumors about it.
• They give you a second chance when you flop. Please Note: Second chances are mostly given to brands that have been consistent at something for a long time and then all of a sudden, slack a bit.

If your customers do this for you, then you earned their trust.

It doesn’t matter if you agree with me or not but your customers are your most valuable assets. Like all your other assets, you need to get them to work for you. You need to understand them in order to leverage them. Don’t focus all your efforts on advertising. Focus a big chunk of your efforts on your building customer relationships too. If you’re in business for the money, you lose focus on the customer but if you decide to be in business for the customer, you build a better business.

Differentiating your brand from other brands can be a daunting activity these days. This is because of the many other brands that are also out there competing for attention from the same audience you need.

In this article, we will not be looking at the very basics of brand recognition: logo and brand colors. What I’ll be sharing with you are tips that will give your brand a unique image and the unique voice it needs to speak to its audience. I am using the word “unique” because every brand has a voice so if I use just “voice” it will sound too regular. You don’t want a regular brand. That sucks.

When your brand has a unique voice, every message it sends out is heard by its audience; the right audience. Your audience will then send out your message to other people who may already be involved in your brand’s conversations or may be total strangers to your brand.

All-in-all, it is essential to give your brand a voice that can be differentiated from the masses.

Let’s look at the ideas you can use to boost your brand.

1. Use a Powerful USP: I am not going to assume you already know what a USP is, so I’m going to define it. A USP is the abbreviation for Unique Selling Proposition, which is a feature of a product or brand that makes it different from other products or brands it competes with. To form a strong brand, you will need a powerful USP that people will want to put to test. For example, a pizza delivery service may have, “we deliver in 30 minutes” as their USP. If you have a pizza delivery service and you think you can deliver in 20 minutes within a certain radius, use “we deliver in 20 minutes within ‘x’ miles” as your USP. Use USPs that sound better than your competitors’ USPs and you will be one step toward winning.

Caution: Be sure you can guarantee that you can deliver on your USPs promise before you put it out in public. If you don’t do this and you keep on breaking your promises, you will fail fast.

2.Use a Mascot: Mascots are great brand building assets. The Santa Clause we know today was a mascot for a Coca-cola X’mas campaign. The campaign was so successful that the image of the mascot spread across borders and the jolly mascot in the red and white suit is what so many people around the world refer to as Santa Clause or Father Christmas in some countries. It’s a shame so many people don’t know about where the new Santa Clause image (as we know it today) came from. You can also create a mascot that will spread your brand’s voice across borders.

3. Create a Tradition: Start a brand tradition. Some businesses have a freebie day as their tradition. They give out free stuffs only on those days. This gets people to spread the word out to their friends. You can choose to do certain things on certain days; on your brand’s birthday, or on Christmas day or Independence day. It could be a once in a month, once a week or once in a year tradition. It could also be a full day or half day event. Choose a day and do something remarkable on that day. Some ideas: give your biggest discounts on those days, host customer meetups on those days only.

4. Customer Participation: Host online and offline meetups for your customers. Get them involved in competitions. Choose brand evangelists from them. They own your brand on the internet now so give them a chance to be part of it. When you do great things for your customers, they will do greater things for you. Reciprocity, remember?

Below is a video of a Mini Cooper meetup. Mini Cooper owners met to showcase their cars and engage in Mini conversations. Can you imagine the benefits? Watch the video and see what I mean.

5. Staff Participation: You and your staff need to participate in customer meetups, your business’ online communities and industry events. Wear T-shirts with your brand’s identity to events that don’t have a dress code attached to the invitation. If you have a mascot, you can even take it along.

6. Practice Barter: There might be an area in your business that itches constantly. Get another business to scratch that itch so that you scratch theirs. Every business has an itch. If you are great at accounting and awful at marketing, marketing is your itch. There are businesses that also have accounting as their itches but that are great at marketing. If there is a situation like this, you can exchange your “itch scratching” services instead of paying for them. You can then ask the other business to list you as their partner on their website or other places both of you deem suitable.

7. Leverage influence: Do you know of a place where your target market is constantly gathered? Blogs are great examples of where you can find your target audience. Reach out to influential bloggers to publish reviews of your products to their readers for a fee or service exchange (remember barter?). When you reach out to influencers, be succinct and straight to the point; don’t go on and on with your idea in the first message. If they want to know more, they will ask you. You can also choose to write guest posts for them if you don’t want to pay with your time (at least, much of it) or money.

8. Start a cause: If you have the support, start a cause. By support, I don’t necessarily mean money. Having a large customer base is also support. Help people save the environment, help people feed orphans, help people save animals, help people do… et cetera. Put your brand forward. Be genuine; no melodrama accepted please.

9. Watch Your Footsteps: Watch your brand’s activities in order to keep your reputation clean. Your competitors will be watching your footsteps and they may be ready to bring you down. Cover where you step by first making sure it’s the right place to step. Makes sense doesn’t it ? Maybe it doesn’t. Okay, if you step in mud, it will show in your footprints and people will see it. Now it makes more sense .

10. Follow your Mission and Vision: Many businesses with mission and vision statements get side-tracked at some point in time. Some just write their missions and visions and then leave them on the desk to collect dust. They are among the 90% who fail. Want to win? Don’t let your mission and vision statements collect dust. If you don’t like it, re-strategize and change its content.

11. Create a comic: There’s nothing like a good laugh right? Consider hiring someone to create a comic about what your brand or the industry you find yourself in. Make a comic of your brand (or your mascot. That is, if you have one) kicking the ass of your biggest competitor. Make it funny, put it on your site, make it downloadable and encourage people to share it. Have your own ideas? Play with them and get that comic out.

12. Get Free Media Publicity: Getting media publicity is fairly easy. You just have to be worthy to be talked about. Perhaps, you started a cause about the environment and have made some contributions. Great! Request to share your story on the green channel or in the green magazine. Maybe a big industry player was at your event. That is great too. Interview that person and give it to the appropriate media to publish or broadcast for the price of them making reference to your business as the source. Don’t be shy to ask for the credit. If you do something remarkable, work at getting free media publicity.

13. Consider Your Website: On your website, tell people about your traditions and everything about your brand. Get them interested in you. If you communicate your brand’s story with them, they will be easily convinced to get involved with you. Integrate your social profiles on your website so that your audience can engage with you on the social side of the internet.

14. Be Consistent: There has never been an inconsistent brand that won the battle of branding. If you are not consistent with your branding efforts, you send different (very confusing) signals out to your target audience. If you want to win, be consistent with your efforts in all branding areas.

Did you get any ideas from this list? Write them down. Develop a strategy on how you are going to deploy them and take action. Don’t leave your brand’s tongue hanging out like “blahh”. Put it back into its mouth and let it start talking.

Infographics have emerged everywhere and businesses and organizations are using them to tell sweet stories (and sometimes sour ones ) about what’s happening inside and outside of their establishments.

I love reading info from an infographic because it makes things easier to understand and it actually provides and engaging experience, so blissful that I sometimes save some infographics I come across on the web.

Now what is an infographic? An infographic is a graphic work that is designed to tell a story or explain a situation in just a few words, graphics and (or) pictures.

Mind you however that, infographics are not just any graphic design or art work. Inforgraphics carry messages and unlike just any type of art or graphic design, there are certain factors to consider when creating infographics.

Factors to consider when constructing an infographic:

• It has to be accurate: The data provided should be as accurate as possible. You are using it to educate people about a situation so why be careless with the info?

• It should be attractive: Care should be taken when choosing colors and shapes for the infographic. Color psychology should be taken into account. A good infographic designer knows color associations and how to use them in design. If you want to hire someone to design your infographic, choose a color expert.

• It should convey a message: Your infographic should have a core message or some lesson in it. Raw data with a cool design won’t mean anything to anyone unless there is a message tied to both the design and data. That message should be easily understandable.

Now that you know the definition and what should be considered, let’s look at why businesses use them.

Why InfoGraphics Rock for Business:

• Infographics can drive traffic: Yes, this is very true. Because of its interactive and graphic nature, people will love to share it with others. People find it an amusing way to explain a situation so they go ahead and share them with their friends.

• Infographics explain a situation more easily: Many savvy marketers know the value of pictures and graphics. People want to learn with pictures most of the time because it makes it easier for them to understand what you are saying and it makes the topic more interesting. That is why infographics are so important.

• It saves time: Because it explains a whole lot in just a few words and it is easily understandable, it saves time that may be used to explain a complex situation that may not be easily understood by employees or customers.

Here is what Randy Krum, a Product Development, Marketing, Visual Thinking and Data Visualization professional who is fascinated by infographics had to say about them:

“Infographics can be a powerful tool for businesses by communicating their message both internally and externally.  Internally, infographics are a great way to share numerical data with employees about budgets, sales numbers, intellectual property, top customers, customer behaviors, etc.  Externally, infographics are very effective in sales presentations, advertisements, on packaging and of course online.  The risk for business is that a poorly designed infographic can turn away customers or communicate the wrong message.”

That sums it all up about the benefits of infographics.

So Randy’s statement adds another voice to the factors to consider when constructing an infographic as well as the benefits your business stands to derive.

All-in-all, infographics can be excellent branding tools for your business.

If you have some ideas of what infographics you should create around your niche, go ahead and start working on it today.

I would love to read about what you think of infographics in the comments box below.