Apple Siri

Apple: King of Brands

Andrea Rowan

Fewer brands have the global brand presence of Apple. At last week’s #AppleEvent, the tech innovator debuted some evolutions on current products, including the iPad Pro. But perhaps the most buzz-worthy thing to come out of the iPad Pro is the inclusion of a stylus, dubbed the ‘Apple Pencil’.

The Apple Watch was the first major Apple product in recent memory not to carry along the “i” branding (instead of the iWatch, it was the Apple Watch). And while the Apple Pencil continues that branding trend it also completely reverses course from the Steve Jobs era at the company. Jobs himself claimed that nobody wanted a stylus and thought the finger was the preeminent pointing device.

But even though Jobs was so ahead of the curve in relation to so many of Apple’s most iconic products, perhaps he hadn’t considered the place of the stylus in the future as it relates to content creation. As it can detect position, force and tilt, it poses immense benefit for tasks such as photo-editing, graphic design and so many other creative based content creation applications.

During their event and unveiling of the Apple Pencil, Microsoft and Adobe were invited on stage to demo uses with their suite of products. Among them, you can use the Apple Pencil to annotate documents, to circle items in documents, and draw shapes on PowerPoint slides among other things.

It’s such a simple evolution of the Apple product line but yet so smart for the company to convert a simple idea into on that is potentially ground-breaking for many who not only own iPads, but are using their technology to create high-quality imagery and branded messages on their own.

Even though your brand will likely never gain the global recognition Apple has gained since its creation, staying innovative in your industry can help your business retain an amazing level of trust with your customers that can almost never be besmirched.

One of the things your business can do to foster that level of trust is to align your digital marketing suite with your long-term business goals. Social media is one area where you can make your brand stand out and feel free to be innovative in order to elevate your brand messaging for your audience.

If you need a hand thinking about how to be innovative with digital in your industry, there are teams of experts eager to help improve your company’s social presence. Contact Smart Reach Digital for a free analysis or sign up to attend our next free webinar that will be packed with insights on social media for your business!

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You Are Your Business in the Digital Forum

Andrea Rowan

Every so often on social media, a story will start trending that follows this basic narrative: Patron doesn’t tip their waiter, waiter snaps a photo of the blank tip line and posts it online and people console the person for having to deal with such a callous and ungenerous person or group. It’s an understandable reaction to a disappointing night at work, but I would guess that the disappointed waiter isn’t thinking about the potential impact their actions might have on their employer’s digital reputation.

In a world where your digital persona is paramount, doing something individually can have a much wider impact. Protecting the digital reputation of your business is extremely important in today’s world – it’s important for business owners to learn to recognize personal behavior can also drastically impact a brand.

71% of customers say online reviews make them more comfortable purchasing a product or service. For your business, the individual behavior of one employee can lead to a massive upheaval with your brand’s digital reputation.

There are steps every business owner can take to protect their online reputation. Ensuring all your online listings are updated and accurate is a great first step and has far reaching benefits to your online and search presence. Next, subscribing to new review alerts will help you take action immediately when a new review pops up.  Look—not everyone is going to have a 5 star experience with your business, every time.  Recognizing reviews where customers may have visited your business when not at its best is critical—then do what you can to rectify the experience with the client and respond, professionally (aka without emotion)!   Finally, encouraging new (and existing) customers to write reviews and promoting positive reviews is a great way to further your digital persona.  Who doesn’t like to read good news about their business? Let your customers be your online megaphone!

Proactively taking control and managing your online reputation can not only maintain current business – it can also help you grow new business through a strategic, integrated approach. Find out what your customers are saying about your brand by signing up for an analysis with a team of professionals today.

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Posted on Flickr by user mojo-jo-jo under CC Attribution 2.0.

Everyone Wants To Be ‘Chosen’: The Power of Contests for Your Business

Andrea Rowan 3 Comments

This past Sunday night at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheater (one of my fav outdoor concert venues) in suburban Denver, CO, 20-year Rock & Roll vets the Foo Fighters took the stage amid a jam-packed theater full of fans. The listed capacity for Fiddler’s Green is roughly 18,000, and if you had asked all 18,000 fans at the show that night if they’d like to be pulled on stage during an acoustic rendition of classic Foo tune ‘My Hero’, it’s highly unlikely you’d have had more than a handful of dissenters (if any)!

One lucky man had this become his reality on Sunday night, as front man Dave Grohl (from his “throne”, a necessity this tour since he broke his leg during a show in Sweden…AND KEPT PLAYING) spotted a man, aged undetermined but probably between 35-40, in the pit with tears in his eyes as Grohl and other band members launched into ‘My Hero’.

Grohl eventually invited this man, (Anthony), on stage for the rest of the song! A once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that every other fan in attendance was at least slightly jealous of, and it came out of a totally spontaneous situation of chance. Last week, I was at the Dierks Bentley concert at Fiddler’s and witnessed the same type of experience (although the lucky fan ended up “shot gunning” a beer with Dierks—cheers)! So, I had to ask myself…what if this spot had been determined by a contest?

Contests are a fabulous way to increase brand awareness, especially if your prize is enticing. A chance to be on stage with the band is a choice prize in any setting, and when that band is Foo Fighters during their newly dubbed ‘Break A Leg’ Tour it could have provided remarkable results if structured as a contest instead of an act of chance.

Imagine 18,000 willing Foo Fighters fans before the show with the ability to enter for a chance to take the stage with the band…it would have been a veritable treasure trove of consumer data for important brand messaging later down the road (although it would have entirely removed the spontaneous nature of the act, which was a good portion of its overall charm).

If you have something your audience would love to win, you’ve got the primary component of a successful contest. Combined with a fully integrated social approach that drives business, you can expand your market base and start driving new business today! Use social to go viral and let your audience carry your message—ask yourself this question—“what would my potential customer be willing to share with me (name, address, phone number, 10 minutes of their time, etc.) to win a chance to party like a rock star, with a rock star”?

 

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