I’m no design expert (you can see that from my sites), but I’ve recently been working with designers on major overhauls of my stuff.  Last night I was in meetings with a team for a new project and I had a personal epiphany of what makes a site awesome.

After a couple of hours, I narrowed it down to three components:

Sexy: It must look cool.  It has to look modern, and have current elements of design that don’t make people think – wow, that was so last decade!

Functional: this is where my applications have always shined… even though they didn’t look very good, they have always been extremely functional.

Easy: If it is not easy to do a “thing” (like add a new record, etc.), then people won’t use it. I tried to use financial software for a while but it was just to dang hard, and I gave up.  People will give up if it is not easy and intuitive, no matter how complex your process is.

How would you grade your offering (or design) on those three things?

Which is more important than another?  I have focused on funcational, then moved towards easy (there’s still a lot of work to do), and have neglected sexy.  But sexy is coming in the next little while… which means the next task is to focus on easy.  Oh man, it’s going to get good

Have you seen a really cool About Us page?  Something that is really about the company, and with personality?

Look no further than GaryVee’s Vayner Media company’s About Us.

The abnormal starts off with a picture of everyone on his team.

That’s cool enough.

But it gets brilliant… mouse over each of the pictures, and you see PERSONALITY!!

I love what Vayner Media is doing here… they are showing they are normal people with all their pictures, and then showing personality just seals the deal for me.

AWESOME!

Last week I got an email from someone who used JibberJobber to help organize her job search. She gets that part:

“I appreciated your presentation, your tips and your enthusiasm. I used Jibber Jobber during my 7 month job search. It is an excellent tool and I enjoyed using it.”

Awesome!

Then, she said:

“I started a new job on October 3.”

Uh oh. This is usually where they say “I’m good now – see ya later!”  I’m thrilled when my users get a job, whether they use JibberJobber or not, but I dislike how so many put their career management on hold while they have a job

But Colena GOT IT.  Instead of breaking up with JibberJobber she wrote:

“Having attended your presentation, I now have a reason to continue using the tool even though my job search has ended.”

Let’s go back to the title of this post: Branding and understanding.

I want people to use JibberJobber to help them navigate (organize and manage) their job search.

However, many people somehow miss the idea that once they land a job, they could be unemployed fairly quickly, and they need to do stuff, like grow and nurture their network, and work on their personal brand.

The JibberJobber brand clearly conveys that JibberJobber is a tool for job seekers.

Does it stop there?

For many people, it does.

The understanding of JibberJobber is that it is for active job seekers.

But there are others who use JibberJobber as a relationship management tool:

• happily employed professionals who know they need to be ready for a transition, even if the writing isn’t on the wall
• unhappily employed professionals who are worried about a pending transition
• freelancers and contractors who might have a day job, but also have outside clients they need to keep organized
• Authors who are interested in self-marketing (since the publishing companies don’t do it for them), and recognize the value of a relationship management tool
• Small business owners, like myself, as well as professional speakers (like myself!)
• Songwriters, who recognize that getting a hit song depends on your ability to network, as well as your talent,
• and many others…

Job seekers see one facet of the brand, and they understand some of the potential, thinking they understand all of the potential.

This is a HUGE issue for all companies… companies who have clients who don’t “get” what they do.

This is a HUGE issue for job seekers, who have branding issues.

How do YOU help your clients/audience understand your brand, your offerings, and your value?

This question can help your job search end faster, or help your company grow bigger.

Ignore it at your own risk.

Every once in a while I find a gem that is hiding in plain site.  Here’s one I read this morning on a TC post:

… Heiferman jumped back into the startup scene with RocketBoard, a project he describes as “a colossal failure and actually we blew through about $20 million dollars of AOL money.” The silver lining? Heiferman received advice that sticks with him to this day—create products to help the greater good of society.

I LOVE THAT.

Sounds too simple, but if Heiferman “spent” $20M to learn it, and he remembers it for an interview, that’s good enough for me.

What are you doing for the great good of society?

I’m working on my fourth book (I know, I know, I swore off books after the first one!), which I’ll announce shortly.

As I research, and read the news, I like to find stories of people who find a problem and figure out a solution that can go to market.

That’s exactly what Jennifer Lindley did.  She’s a diabetic, and has a son who is diabetic, and was concerned about what to do in an emergency.

In a local news article she says:

Someone had used spray-paint to emblazon “DIABETIC” on the rooftop where a group was stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“It was a really hopeless, helpless feeling for me,” Jennifer Lindley said about seeing the image on the news. “I didn’t know what to do for him.”

These kits are what she came up with:

I love how brilliant this is.  Combine Utah’s “thing” about emergency preparedness (it’s a theme I don’t see as prominent outside of Utah/Idaho) with a HUGE, HUGE need we have around the world, and you get a simple solution that is affordable, and can help set your mind at ease. Learn more about her product here.

Why do I love this?

Because I’m looking for ideas where you and I and regular people like Jennifer Lindley can CREATE our own income, independent of a boss.

Kudos, Jennifer!

I think about these things a lot, especially when I’m speaking.  I think “my heavens, I need a new email signature.”

Why?

Because the current one isn’t communicating what I want it to communicate.

Here’s the old one, from this morning:

Any guesses on what each number means?  I’ll list them below, but here’s the new signature:

Here’s what each number is for:

1. This is a special string of characters I chose to tell JibberJobber to not make anything below it a log entry.  I could change it, and probably will, but this is a very important line, even though it really means nothing to anyone.
2. I think it’s important to put LinkedIn DVD, instead of just DVD.
3. I moved this description behind the link, to be consistent with the other lines.
4. I decided to take this off… my Twitter followers hasn’t necessarily grown, and if you really want to find me you can search for me.  We’ll see if I flop back on this one.
5. I took the JibberJobber mobile link out… I think there are more important things to communicate…. like the new line for my LinkedIn book!

Luckily I can change things as often as I want… make changes for yourself… if you hate it, you aren’t locked into anything!

Here are other posts one when I changed my signatures:

Today I (tearfully) retire my email signature
A new email signature

I’m toying around with changing some visual elements of one web page (not a website), and I found some AMAZING tools:

Color Scheme Designer: This helps you see what colors go good with one another… very cool tool.

Flaming Text – Free Logo Designs: Put in the word, change some settings, and it gives you text with different visual characteristics.  Super cool.

Choosing Color Combinations: blog post that is excellent, from Veerle’s blog.

My friend Brad Merrill took the plunge and started a blog.

It has the potential to be an awesome personal branding tool for himself, and I applaud what he’s doing.

This is the first of two posts where I’m going to give feedback (with his permission) on his nascent strategy.  Today I’ll talk about how he let me (and hundreds of others) know about the blog.

It’s important to let others know you have a blog… not just once but frequently.  Be careful how you do it, however, because no one wants an email each time you write a new blog post (unless they opt in to a newsletter, or something like that).

Here’s Brad’s message I got last night:

There are a few things I like about this email, and perhaps a line or two I don’t care for.  Instead of critiquing the entire thing, I want to focus on TWO things:

The Length.

The length of this message is PERFECT.  If it were any longer I’d get lost, or not read it, or save it for later, or something like that.  If it were shorter I might feel like he’s just spamming me and a million others with “read my blog!”  It is sincere, concise, and very focuses.

The Question in Yellow.

This jumped out at me the most.  At first I thought “COOL, a professional blog” (as opposed to a personal blog).

But then, when I read the question “if you have some things you would like to (to) see me write about,” tell me.

That’s when I thought “where’s the focus?”

Indeed, reading through the email again I realized I had no idea what the theme, or topics, of the blog are. Is it a personal blog? Is it a professional blog?  What exactly does Brad do, or think about?

If Brad could help me understand this, even if it’s just a reminder (some people know, but a reminder doesn’t hurt), he would have used this email as a branding tool, and helped reinforce his personal brand to his contacts (whether they clicked over to the blog or not).

At a minimum he could have said:

I am going to write about ______ and ______.  My last post talks about ethical behavior.

To take it up a notch he could have said something like:

As a professional accountant I see a lot of interesting things.  I’ll write posts about my expertise (sales and use tax and financial accounting) and keep it interesting with stories and examples. I will probably write about my passions, including watch collecting) and try to always tie the posts back to business ideas. Whether you are an accountant or just interested in business, I hope to have relevant content for you.  If you have any ideas or questions, please let me know, as I begin this journey.

In the first email he reinforces his brand.  In the second email he drills down a bit more so people understand more of his breadth and depth… even if they don’t become blog readers they will know what some of his specialties and passions are.

“Where’s the focus” was my first thought, the second thought was: missed branding opportunity.

Next post I’ll critique his second blog post.

Hey there, I write on a number of different blogs … you might not have seen these so I wanted to share them with you here:

From my JibberJobber blog: Seth Godin: Pick Yourself

From the Career Resumes blog: Job Search: You Have To Pick Up The Phone

From my LinkedIn blog: Optimizing Slideshare On Your LinkedIn Profile

From this Jason Alba blog: pill vs. vitamin

Enjoy!

A few months ago I was talking with someone about business and marketing and they introduced a concept new to me, but I got the impression that everyone else had already heard of it.

When you are selling/marketing something to someone, do they percieve it as a PILL or a VITAMIN?

The purpose of a PILL is to alleviate a pain (for example, a very bad headache).  The effects should be somewhat immediate. The value of the PILL, at the moment of pain, is really, really high.  I have a PROBLEM and a PILL is an immediate SOLUTION.  You know the perceived value can skyrocket, especially as the problem, or pain, is higher and immediate.

A VITAMIN, on the other hand, is more of a preventative measure.  You don’t take a VITAMIN to get results within 30 minutes…. VITAMINS are a subtle solution to a long-term, non-immediate problem.  The pain is not there, and you might wonder if it will ever come.  It’s easy to feel like it’s a non-essential solution to a problem you might not (or, likely won’t) have.

When I heard this I was perplexed, and I asked, are my offerings (products+services) perceived as PILLs (high value, immediate need) or VITAMINS (nominal value, not sure if really needed)???

Figuring this out, and perhaps even repackaging and repositioning, can help you sell more, make more, and become more valuable.

Or, you can keep trying to sell a solution for a non-problem.

OF COURSE, if you look at Covey’s four quadrants, you know you should spend time in the Important/NotUrgent box… which seems to me to be the VITAMIN mindset… but how many of us (or, our customers) are in the Urgent/____ box?  That’s where the PILL comes in.

How are you positioning YOUR offering?