There are many ways in which a company can end up looking bad in front of customers, the press, or just about everyone. And it seem that this week I am prompted to explore many of them.

Finding the right companies and the right people to help your business grow is always a great idea. Hiring a great HR manager to make sure your staff is top notch, hiring the write PR and marketing agency, these are complicated tasks that not all companies get right.

But once you hire someone that’s really good at what they do, make sure you are familiar with the campaigns they run for you! Imagine this: one of the sites I sometimes write for gets this great targeted email proposing a very interesting contest . The message is well written, it’s clear they did some research before and you can’t wait to get started. Unfortunately, you want to have the story published by the end of the day and the person contacting you did not answer. You pick up the phone and call the company behind the campaign – they don’t know who the person is, what the campaign is about and their marketing officer is not in.

Such lack of communication within the company shakes both your credibility and that of the campaign you’re running. Maybe the news outlets and blogs you’ve contacted will wait around to see the situation resolved and explained, maybe they just think it’s all a big scam (you might have hired someone to build links, but there’s no contest or prize involved!).

Even if you run an online campaign, people are still likely to actually call your land line and ask for details. They might actually pay you a visit to find out more about your company and see what it’s all about. So everyone should know a.what those looking for details are talking about and b.who to direct them to for information.

Photo credit

There are a few ways to handle competition. You can be civil and friendly and help each other out while focusing most of your effort on getting new customers and making sure existing ones stay on board. Or you can play the tough competitor card, hunt for mistakes, real or not, and point fingers every time you can. While I believe professionals in any field should educate potential buyers when it comes to scams of all kinds, when it’s matters of opinion we’re talking about, pointing fingers is not the way.

But if you did indulge in saying how evil and deceiving a competitor was because they did such and such, make sure you stick to what you claimed to believe. Try not to forget about it and give a thumbs-up example from the same range, but coming from a smaller player that you don’t feel is a threat and would like to take under your wing. While people momentarily forget, they tend to remember negative statements, especially when you’re the one to remind them of it all.

Let’s take an example. Industry publication X says industry publication Y is a loser for publishing a top based on the wrong metrics, just because X does not like the metrics, valid as they might be to others. A few months pass by and industry publication X promotes a different top from industry publication Z, based on the same metrics. The tops cover aspects of the same area of business and what’s irrelevant for one, is always irrelevant for the other.

Why is that wrong? If you pose as defender of all things pure in your field, make sure you don’t change your mind later. It makes you look spineless or scared and a genuine mud thrower, whichever it is, it affects your image, it shatters your reputation and credibility as a reliable expert/source in the field. Taking stands does draw attention to you, lots of eyes turning to see who you’re speaking against. They will look again when you abruptly change your mind and cheer for the other side!

People are lazy. And laziness, when kept under control, fuels a lot of their drive to do things faster and better. Let’s be honest, we’d all want to work less and smarter, generate more income and have tons of time to enjoy those we love, our passions and our hobbies. Given the opportunity, we’d all prefer to work for 3 months and travel around the world for the rest of the year (or insert other pleasant pastime here).

We need to stay mobile and render parts of what we do automatic, so that we gain time. And when it comes to social media, well, we have taken automatic to another level. Auto replies, retweets, direct messages, scheduled posts, automatic posting of content to social media websites. It’s all working out great for us.

But when we go fully automatic, we also fail to monitor what’s happening. We know things are taken care of, so we can’t we bothered with those aspects anymore, we have other, more pressing matters on our hands. The danger? Automatic processes don’t stop to think. And that’s how a few days ago a quite famous blogger managed to retweet their about page. Now one really tweets their blog’s about page and I caught some quite negative reactions. I immediately thought it was an automatic tweet plugin gone wrong.

So go automatic when it suits you. We all need the helping hand. Or about a dozen of them. But remember no piece of software can really be installed and then forgotten, no matter what their marketers tell you. Try to keep track of what you’re running and prevent minor mishaps that can make you look bad.

Those two concepts put together, not likely to win the “couple of the year” award, are they? And they shouldn’t, simply because guilt trips should never be part of business emails, especially when it’s the first email you send out!

Imagine this! You want to introduce your recently launched business. You mention your website, then jump to saying you have a kid who’s just turned two and add a link to cute photos of that kid. Then mention an obscure site you used to have but no longer exist. And finally, in paragraph 4 actually mention one of the services you provide. Nothing on your expertise, no reference to satisfied customers, no detailed skill set of your team. Just throw the baby in, that’s bound to work!

No matter how I twist and turn it, other than guilt trip, no other reason comes to mind for mentioning offsprings and showing photos to potential customers. Maybe, just maybe, if you were a photographer specializing in newborns and toddlers, there might be a reason for the photos. But saying your main quality as a business professional is having a child? It’s crazy! And the image of yourself you put out there has little to no chance to generating leads or sealing the deal.

Remember, you’re trying to build a business relationship! Yes, if you’ve had a client for years, a personal bond develops, you might even become friends and show eachother family photos. But if it’s a new client you’re targeting, keep it professional and tell them how you can help them grow their business. Honestly, they couldn’t care less about you as a dad!

Guest post by Hasan Shirazi, Logoinn

The significance of a unique logo for the purpose of marketing and branding of a company or its product is not hidden from anyone. Having a perfect logo could be the ultimate wish of any business owner who knows the real importance of visual identity. However, many a time, due to lack of knowledge or some other factors, business owners do some common logo design mistakes while building their business brand. These mistakes eventually develop a wrong brand image, and then a business has to face decline even when all other branding elements are fine. In this article, we have pointed out 5 common logo design mistakes most commonly made by business owners.

Not hiring a professional designer to do the job

On the surface you might think that designing a logo is not a complicated task. You may assume that nearly anyone with some taste and artistic inclinations can design a logo for you. However, reality is quite different. Designing a business logo is not a work of new or pastime amateurs.

While seeking a logo designer, you need to understand that getting a logo designed by a professional and experienced logo designer does matter. Logos which are designed by non-professionals are usually unable to portray the right message. Therefore, hiring a professional is fundamental when it comes to ensuring that you obtain the most attractive and the most effective logo for your business.

Failing to describe the purpose of the business

Many businesses struggle in building a unique brand identity with a weak or vague logo that portrays a different image than what the company is actually about. When it comes to the relationship issue between your logo and your business, you need to pay attention to target marketing. Not only does your logo need to illustrate what your business is all about it also needs to be designed in a manner to attract the attention of the niche market that contains those consumers who will be most interested in what your business offers.

Over-crowding the logo with too many design elements

Logos with a simple design never go out of fashion. Whereas, complexity in your logo kills your brand image. Too many colors, complicated images and unreadable fonts make your logo hard to process and visually unattractive.

Hence, when selecting a logo design for your business, keep in mind that a clean, simple, and uncluttered look normally is the best selection and the best choice for your business operation.

With a simple and uncluttered logo you will find that consumers will more readily connect with your business. A quicker, sounder connection will increase the number of customers or clients that your firm or company will do business with both in the short and the long term.

Failing to provide resizable formats for different media

Resizability or scalability refers to the manner in which your logo can be effectively resized for all the available marketing and advertising media. If you are like most business owners, you will use your logo in a number of different ways. As a consequence, you need to have a logo that can be utilized in a variety of different sizes.

Unfortunately, not all logos are scalable in an appropriate manner. Certain logos simply do not look good when they are shifted into different sizes for different purposes. Therefore, while designing it, make sure it will look great in all sizes wherever you will use it.

Having poor black & white logo versions

Beyond attractiveness of the color scheme that you will use in your logo, you will also want to consider the black and white aspect for using your logo on the media where you cannot use it in full colors. For example, when you need to send a letterhead to your client.

You logo should have an ability to grab the viewer’s attention even in black and white. Therefore, with other tasks of defining colors, fonts and design, you should also focus on the black and white version of your logo.

Conclusion

Because your logo is such an integral part of the marketing, advertising and promoting of your business, you need to undertake a research about your logo to make sure it will be as effective and as appropriate as possible. By taking care of these mistakes that I’ve pointed out, you will be able to make the most appropriate decision as to what you should avoid in your approach of choice to designing a logo.

Are you wondering why I’ve kind of disappeared? Well, the reasons are two: my not feeling very well and Kayla chewing up my laptop charger. Does the last one sound a bit like the “Dog ate my homework” excuse? Well, at least it is funny! But being without my laptop really reduced my online time. Why? Because I have to get my boyfriend away from his computer and work without most of my tools. Then again I have no saved passwords and it gets into a big hassle very fast.

Bottom line, I want my computer running . At all times if possible. Now the big question comes: why didn’t I buy a new charger. Well, I couldn’t find one. In the big city, capital even, of Bucharest, with its 4 or 5 Sony Centers, there are little to no Sony Vaio chargers.

Why not use a universal charger, you may ask. Well, because Sony Vaios are so great and high-end and pretty, that the normal universal chargers don’t work on them… I’ve tried, about 4 different models! The guy from the place I tried to buy the charger from called a colleague, that’s how I found out they really don’t work on this series of laptops.

How will the problem be solved? Well, they placed an order, I’ll have my charger in two days. It sucks as this is my work computer, with all my files, billing software, etc. So what did Sony do wrong? They were nice enough to look for the charger in all their centers from Romania, found one, ordered it, I’ll go buy it in a few days. Problem solved!

Not exactly: if you provide a laptop that does not like universal chargers, you should make sure that in the largest city of Romania you have a few extras at all time. Otherwise, the next time I buy a new laptop, I might go with a different brand. Sony Vaio is not a cheap brand. It’s designed for business people. The kind that use their laptops intensively and are dead without them. Or they might be alive, but without purpose.

So what happens after your customer buys the product is very important if you want to make sure they buy from you again and again. We all agree that return customers are the greatest. But keeping them happy after the sale isn’t limited to providing amazing customer service. Availability of spare parts and making things move fast is as important. If you have this huge channel targeting new customers, old ones will end up feeling overlooked, unappreciated, upset. And if there’s anything they did not like about your product before, that will become a deal breaker all of the sudden.

Will I buy a Vaio next time? I honestly don’t know. I was pretty sure beofre all this hassle.

There are some who believe bad PR only comes from failed or irresponsibly planned actions of public relation specialists. It actually also comes from having no PR to handle negativity associated with a certain company. There’s also this ongoing belief that not all companies need PR, because they see PR as just some people trying to get stories into the newspapers.

Yet here’s the example revealing how PR can help you better communicate with existing and prospect customers. Let’s take a construction company. Negotiations are mostly based on different things than the number of articles on the papers. Old projects are analyzed, those hiring them want to know if they work effectively, if they finish on time and if they can adapt to new challenges throughout a project.

There’s this construction company renovating an underground passage placed in the very heart of Bucharest. It leads to the subway station and it’s the only way to get from one side to another of this huge crossroad. I’ve read quite a few blog posts on how they never work. People have been passing by at different hours and there’s never someone working there.

Piata Universitatii, Bucharest City Center, Construction Site Location
Photo Credit

The underground passage went from fast foods, shops and book stores to dust, garbage and extremely bad smells. Now, if they actually don’t do the work because they’re lazy, then no PR expert in the world can help them on the long run. Even if the crisis is solved in a positive manner, they will surely mess up the next project.

But what if they’re not working because they can’t through no fault of their own? Those hiring them might not have kept their end of the bargain, they might need to work at night to avoid making people walk in a cloud of dust, they might be waiting for some structure studies or some architect’s design first.

In such a case, a PR person could find a low budget solution: some announcements in the passage stating the reason, giving some info on when work will start and when the project would be finished. Otherwise, the main opinion is that the construction company is just another one getting a huge amount of money to basically do nothing most of the time.

As the name of the company in charge of the project needs to be displayed on the construction site, all those passing thorough the center of Bucharest will associate their name with laziness, falling behind with projects and other negative aspects. Why would a company allow something like that to happen? It does take an enormous amount of money and quite some time to put a positive twist on such an image disaster.