Not all hype is bad. However bad hype is. Lets get into a little cause and effect discussion here. Your business may desperately need a gut check.

The good hype is the kind we can agree with at an emotional or gut level with no resistance.  An easy example in recent times is anything Apple related.  Of course this continues to be good hype because the entire Apple experience is fulfilling from product to service to the human experience with brand, and the shared conversation with Apple customers geeking over the latest iPhone or musing over favorite apps on the iPad.

The bad side of hype, of course occurs when one or many claims about a product or service are not agreeable at the emotional or gut level.  The easiest way to know bad hype is in a continual re-surfacing of bad experiences.  The easiest way to spot hype gone bad is negative-word-of-mouth.

Now, how the two intertwine.

Fast, faster and even faster hype – the slug fest of right and wrong.

Keep in mind, hype doesn’t help especially when you are trying to leverage hype without much concern for the world your service or product serves.

Consider the recent Ocean Marketing crisis where a “regular” customer got mistreated at the customer service level and sent a few emails to other businesses in the industry looking for help and ended up being supported by industry leaders as they systematically dismantled an unscrupulous marketer. All within a couple of days via email and blog posts.

Although the big drama was watching things spin out of control at Ocean Marketing as Paul got choked out for being a bully, the small and important lesson for all of us is that the customer was worried about the early hype that got him to put money on the table during pre-order sales. He questioned that hype, fearing he would not get the product he paid for and his very basic questions were no different than you or I would ask. The story that unfolded after that is now internet lore with over 600k views on YouTube since being posted 6 days ago.

Make no mistake, even though it was “business as usual” for all the parties involved, it became hype along the way thanks to the power available to regular people and the internet.

With all the parties involved, the technology and viral nature of the web has threaded out several channels of hype just in this one situation – a pre-order of a game controller and a bad customer service experience. Those that did not know about the product the customer bought are now advocating and probably purchasing the product, where as Ocean Marketing, the company responsible for marketing and customer service has been crippled through the event, while Mike and his site Penny Arcade have fostered even more support and genuine appreciation by fans and industry leaders. And to further claim his point-of-view and support for the regular person, Mike reported:

“It might not always make the most business sense and it is a policy that has caused us some legal problems, but I really don’t give a shit about that. When these assholes threaten me or Penny Arcade I just laugh. I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames.” — Mike Krahulik

It’s virtually impossible to disagree with his perspective.  Bad people shouldn’t get away with bad things – and this means that bad marketing, bad service, bad relationships are more and more subject to this type of situation. So, if ever you needed to see the way basic customer service, email, and social media can work for or against you and your business, here it is.  And this is not an anomaly – This is the new baseline.

Look at your business

Hype is going further, faster, and with more ease than ever before.  As a business owner, marketer, and human – we are one moment away from a house of cards falling. There has never been a better time then now to guide your business with a simple “Do the right thing” influence from the top down, inside and out.

Take a look at who you are aligned with. Do they pass the gut check? Have you made a decision in favor of a vendor only because of low cost or their ‘results’ even though you question their performance or integrity? Have you worked hard to build your company, but not cared much about the human experience of your customers, suppliers, or peers?

Now is the time to consider these things and make changes if needed. You never know when a “regular” customer will introduce you to a lesson on business ethics.

Hype is everywhere – from healthy heart claims on yellow cereal boxes to red liquid that gives you wings when you drink it. This is not new information. However, the hype machine is going to create serious issues for business operators and marketers. Here’s why:

• It’s easier to produce, fabricate and manufacture hype then every before.
• It’s increasingly manipulative because technology and tactics obfuscate what the hype is actually trying to accomplish.
• It’s easier to spread the hype.
• It’s easier to get burned by hype.

Why does this matter to you? Because you want to spread things that matter, you want to help others, you want to lead and direct a successful business. And now, it’s going to be harder for you to do that.

Don’t Believe the Hype!

In 1988, Famed rap group Public Enemy released the track that put the phrase “Don’t believe the hype” into the masses. And now, it’s even more relevant as we find ourselves saying “Did Bon Jovi die? That’s what I heard? Where? Oh, on Twitter or something.”

But the problem is the hype is harder to spot and as more and more people get victimized by the hype; phishing schemes, email scams, click-through-defrauding, identity theft, and all the things in between, the masses will become more and more hesitant and cynical. The bad apples in the bunch are going to ruin the whole bunch of good apples.

Turd Polishing

Here in the south, you’ll find a lot of really funny and questionable expressions. Many of them seem straight outta the standup routines of Jeff Foxworthy (You might be a redneck) and Larry the Cable Guy. One of my favorites is “you can’t polish a turd” and I’d have to argue that most people can’t polish a turd, but a marketer can. But that doesn’t mean you should.

So, if you are looking at increasing your marketing skills, your advanced benefit statements, USP’s, pitch videos, squeeze pages, clever headlines and affiliate networks – remember, hype won’t help. You’ll need to be increasing your ability to communicate value and real benefit. Not just the words that persuade and influence action, but the actual products and material that have value.

Hype Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kerryank/

Sometimes, we designers forget that not everybody lives and breathes graphic design, and we can be guilty at times of throwing around odd terms like vector, ghosting or sans-serif and expect everyone to know what we’re talking about. It’s almost as if we have our own secret language, and it can be baffling if you’re not familiar with it. The good news is, you don’t need to go to design school to understand the basics. In this post, I’ll go over some principal terms and processes familiar to most designers to make communicating with us right-brainers a little easier.

Have you ever been asked by a designer for an EPS, AI or vector version of your company’s logo? Did you ask yourself, “What the heck is an EPS?” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked this of a client and the only thing they have available is a tiny JPEG that was copied from their website.

Most people are familiar with the friendly JPEG file, it’s widely used on the web for images that are really small or that don’t need to be of high quality. But, because JPEG images are raster-based, they lose quality when enlarged (even a little bit), you’d never want to use a JPEG for an image that contains text or large blocks of color. Also, JPEG files do not support transparencies, so if if an image such as your logo needs to be over a colored or textured background, it will display a box around the image.

A vector image may also be referred to as an EPS or AI (Adobe Illustrator) file. Vector images are a must when making truck wraps, banners, billboards or large trade show graphics as they can be enlarged to any size imaginable and never lose any quality. These files can also be easily edited if colors or any other elements need to be changed. Adobe Illustrator (and occasionally Corel Draw) is the industry standard for creating logos in vector format.

Here are a few other important file extensions and the best uses for them:

• GIF – Use a GIF for simple web images that don’t have a lot of different colors. These are great for small animations, logos, web buttons, charts or diagrams, cartoon-like drawings, and web banners.
• PNG – Use PNG extension when you need smaller file sizes with no loss in quality. PNG files support transparent backgrounds and are great for the web to display logos, web banners, web buttons, and photos.
• TIFF – TIFF files are large and there is no loss in quality. It’s a fairly old format, so it is well supported by a large range of applications. It also supports transparency and is good for both raster and vector data. However, because they are fairly large files, TIFFs aren’t a good choice for the web.
• PDF – PDFs are widely used across the internet to share files with others who don’t have the same software. They’re also great for electronic documents and forms, and for ebooks. PDFs are often used to send print materials to a print shop, and can also support vector data that can be edited in Adobe Illustrator.

Another important thing to know when it comes to communicating with your designer is knowing and understanding the Creative Process. There are 4 basic steps to this process:

1. Creative Brief: First off, a designer will collect a Creative Brief from the client. Learn more about Creative Briefs here. 
2. Research: Then, based off of the information collected from the Creative Brief, the designer will then begin researching, collecting  both data and inspiration. One thing that I find extremely helpful is writing down a word-association list. Then I take the word-association list and begin sketching Thumbnails. Thumbnails are just quick sketches to illustrate basic ideas for a design. The more time a designer spends in the thumbnail stage, the faster and more productive the next step will be.
3. Comps: Comps, or comprehensives, are when the designer takes their thumbnails off the sketchpad and onto the computer. These are the first drafts of the design. A designer will show several different styles and directions in these comps and let the client decide on a look and feel that they like. After being reviewed by the client, the comps go back to the designer with feedback and changes. There are usually several rounds of the feedback process.
4. Implementation: This is the final step and when your design has reached perfection. Now, your designer will present to you all the final files you will need to put your new lovely design into action.

There is definitely much, much more to the graphic design glossary, but these few terms are surely some of the most important and will hopefully help you and your designer to communicate more effectively.

How do I Increase my Google PageRank?

Popular question with many popular answers. Only Google knows what you really must do at any given moment for a great PageRank because they change their algorithm often. A change in May was more or less targeted to prevent strong ranking for product based pages typically in ecommerce sites with few links, little traffic, and content that’s not all that unique.

But wait, what is Google PageRank?

A bit from Google’s PageRank page tells you, essentially, to have good sites link to you and do your best to follow their webmaster guidelines.

Think that’s a lot to consider? You did check those two Google links right? I mean, that’s THE WORD straight from the horse’s mouth. But, still, there is more to it.

I’ll assume you want longevity in your online efforts, not just temporarily gaming the system (bad idea). If you still haven’t checked the Google Webmaster Guidelines, check it now to see their “Quality guidelines” section and the things NOT to do.

When you want to increase your Google PageRank you really want to increase the likeliness of being found when someone searches for something that matches the content of your site. One really solid approach to this is to employ the power of inbound marketing (Turning Minds will do this for you) and you’ll be able to build a solid foundation to your online presence.

Wondering how Inbound Marketing has anything to do with your Google PageRank?

It’s about the content silly. No really, think about it. If you originally cared about your PageRank that meant you cared about your customers finding you when they did a search. So that means you want your customer to visit a web page on your website with relevant information (content) about what they are searching for – and that’s how inbound marketing becomes important to your overall plans for PageRank.

But you just want to know about PageRank tips right? Ok, fair enough. First off, SEO Pixie Dust isn’t really an option.

So what now? Just the facts please:

• Use Page Titles on every page
• Use proper coding conventions with CSS and XHTML (programmers don’t always know or do this)
• Make sure to have a Google friendly sitemap for indexing purposes
• Use an RSS feed on your site and submit to to RSS directories
• Apply keywords to the meta data of the site (but not too many)
• Create content that is meaningful and matches keywords (but not too many keywords)
• Use heading tags < h1 > to emphasize the keywords and content of the article
• Create high value links into your content (tricky, but social networks help this)
• Share and distribute content across the web that is in high traffic areas that link back to you in a meaningful way

Other Tips:

• Social bookmark your pages to help people find your content
• Post meaningful comments on other related blog posts and forums
• Blog regularly on your site with concise content that matches a search
• Use social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and many more to create visibility to your content
• Employ writers and content providers that understand content development and SEO AS WELL AS YOUR AUDIENCE
• Make friends with people who will think your content rocks and link to it (because they think its good)
• Add sharing tools like sharethis.com to make it easy for others to promote your content
• Absolutely be familiar with the Webmaster Guidelines from Google

Got more questions? Need help putting this into action? Tweet me, call me, or email me!

Google Instant shows real-time results as you type. Your account may not have it yet so watch this video to see it in action.

This is great visual feedback for the user, but… It has drawbacks for search engine marketers and marketers focused on the long-tail search and those who value being found in local search.

All this explained by Chris S Penn in his recent post “My 3 takeaways on Google Instant“.

Need to record audio on the road, at conferences, or other places from the convenience of your mobile phone? Consider doing it with Cinch and share it socially across all your social networks.

I personally use a Motorola Droid and downloaded the Cinch App for my phone, but Cinch also provides a phone number you can call to record your audio, no app needed!

As you can see in the video, I have a Cinch account too. Feel free to follow me on Cinch and you’ll be notified when I post a new Cinchcast!

If you found this video useful, check out:
How to make a Cinchcast pt1 (setting up an account and seeing other Cinchcasts)
How to make a cinchcast pt2 (recording audio online – easy and fast)

Did you setup a Cinch account or do you already have a Cinch account? Leave a comment below for others and I’ll follow your Cinchcasts too!

Erik Qualman’s  ”Social Media Revolution 2″ video has some amazing stats regarding online usage and social media.

Quoted from Erik’s blog post on this video.

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
31. Only 14% trust advertisements
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
42. Bonus: comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network

I think it’s clear that Social Media is not a fad and that the web is here to stay.  What are you doing to embrace social media and improve your online presence?

The first video on How to make a Cinchcast gave you the basics of creating a cinch account and moving around the website. Now, let’s make a Cinchcast – it’s… well, it’s a cinch…

As shown in the video, I created a Cinchcast during the video tutorial. This is the embedded version of the Cinchcast created in that video. I just copied the embed code from that Cinchcast and pasted it directly into this blog post here:

As you can see in the video, I have a Cinch account too. Feel free to follow me on Cinch and you’ll be notified when I post a new Cinchcast!

If you found this video useful, check out:
How to make a Cinchcast pt1 (setting up an account and seeing other Cinchcasts)
How to make a cinchcast pt3 (using your mobile device to record audio)

Did you setup a Cinch account or do you already have a Cinch account? Leave a comment below for others and I’ll follow your Cinchcasts too!

Need to record audio? Embed it on your website? Build a community around it? Need it to be simple, web-based, or portable? Then you need to learn about Cinch, because Cinch makes it very easy to record your audio in a variety of ways and share it with Facebook, Twitter, and more!

The following video gives you an orientation to the Cinch website, how to create a Cinch user account, and how to view other people’s Cinchcasts as well as your own Cinchcast.

As you can see in the video, I have a Cinch account too. Feel free to follow me on Cinch and you’ll be notified when I post a new Cinchcast!

If you found this video useful, check out:
How to make a cinchcast pt2 (recording audio online – easy and fast)
How to make a cinchcast pt3 (using your mobile device to record audio)

Did you setup a Cinch account or do you already have a Cinch account? Leave a comment below for others and I’ll follow your Cinchcasts too!

5 Minutes of mind blowing stats, facts and figures by Jess3.com.  In just a few minutes, you’ll have a much better feel for what is happening *has happened* with the internet, social media, and more.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.