Let me tell you how Social Media works…

There are two layers. There’s the online layer and then the offline layer.

The online layer is where we all say whatever we want about ourselves and expect people to take our word for it. The offline layer is where you have to PUT UP OR SHUT UP. You’re either the same person IRL (In Real Life) that you claim to be online or you’re not.

If you ARE the same person, your “Cred” (credit, props, believability) increases. Street Cred, Social Cred.. Whatever Cred you built online, your reputation will become infinitely more valid if you walk the walk instead of just talking the talk.

If you ARE NOT the same person, your Cred will DISAPPEAR. Beleedat. Gone! :D Nobody’s going to believe anything you have to say after your IRL presentation disproves who you made yourself out to be online.

Who Are You, Really?

It’s now the year 2010. Everybody that you know has their own online networks. Everybody that you know has an opinion about you, good, bad or neutral. Everybody that you know has EXPRESSED THAT OPINION about you to their friends. Being that we tend to all have the same friends in this space, all you need is for the word to come around from several people before the rumors about you are accepted as proven fact.

For example.. The other night, I was hanging out with Halley, Rahul, Kripa & Tarun for St. Patrick’s day (which was an EVENT on its own, but we won’t get into that, haha).

During the evening, my blog came up in conversation. I’m always caught off guard when someone mentions that they read the messages in bottles that I float out onto the internet.

I’m not exactly surprised, being that I’ve averaged 264 “uniques” per day for the last full year (An “unique” being a visit to a website from a distinct IP address, most likely indicating that a different person came to the site for each address so you can gauge how many people are accessing your content), but being that there’s no telling who’s reading if they don’t leave a comment, I have to assume that everybody I know or NOBODY I KNOW is reading this. :D

The point is that everyone I spent time with last night got a decent idea of what it’s like to hang out with me, albeit under overly-loud, overly-crowded circumstances due to St. Patty’s. The time we’ve spent together IRL is going to flavor their experience if they read something I write. The online and offline are going to be weighed against each other and my authenticity will be determined by each individual.

What happens after that is that information hits the back-channel.

As much interaction as we have in public on the internet, much more goes on behind the scenes. Back-Channel information is also considered more authentic because people are free to say what they really think without fear of public backlash. That guy Bill is an alcoholic. That guy Bill is a womanizer. That guy Bill wouldn’t hesitate to punch you in your face. That guy Bill is a gentleman. That guy Bill won’t ever leave you laying around drunk in a pile of garbage at the end of the night…

Whatever it is, people trade stories about you, and if you’re someone like me, who has 413 Facebook Friends in common with Chris and 349 FB Friends in common with Sarah and 347 FB Friends in common with Dina, there is LOTS OF INFORMATION floating around on the back-channel defining how people perceive you and act towards you that you never even find out about. Fortunately for me, I’m an empath, so I can actually FEEL when someone’s acting differently towards me compared to what I’m used to from them. Most people can’t do this, so they’re pretty much oblivious to how their offline shenanigans are affecting their online reputation.

Reputation vs. Reality

Before I get to my point.. Another advantage that I have is that I live in New York City, the center of the universe. :)

Everybody comes here sooner or later.

I’ve hung out with people from Texas, The UK, Hawaii, Japan, California, The Netherlands, Ireland, Israel…

There are A LOT OF PEOPLE that know what it’s like to have a f2f IRL chat with me and I really doubt any of them would give you an extremely different opinion of who I appear to be. That’s because I’m not acting. I’m trying my best to deliver via text what I actually think about or do. Much is lost in translation, but I’m attempting to express “The Real”.

Most people don’t have the same opportunity to meet so many people unless they go to a festival or conference such as South by Southwest® (SXSW®). That means they don’t get much practice at interacting with people IRL that they’ve built relationships with online. I would compare it to going straight to a professional sports playoff situation without having played any of the regular season. There’s a great opportunity for brand advancement and an even greater opportunity for brand destruction.

Your online presence is a virtual representation of yourself, like Second Life or The Sims. Before people meet you, they’re likely to assume that the way you are online is the way you are IRL. There’s no reason not to, because all they know about you is what they’ve read. Once they meet you, they will come away with the impression that you’re outputting authentic content that expresses who you are as a person or that you’re AN ACTOR. If you’re determined to be an actor, your media will be perceived as AN ACT. You’re writing a character, like Don Quixote or Jason Bourne.

Matt Damon isn’t Jason Bourne IRL. When you watch his movies, you don’t go “Man… Matt Damon could kick someone’s ass! :D”. Similarly, if your IRL presentation isn’t congruent with the content you post online, people probably won’t mention it in public blog posts or comments, but on the back-channel, the word spreads rapidly that you’re FULL OF ****! :D Everything you carefully built by typing words online that you never intended to back up in person is going to be undermined when you go to a conference and people meet the real you. Believe me.. It’s too late for trickery. The time for snake oil sales is OVER. Whether people tell you to your face or not, your smoke & mirrors aren’t fooling those of us that actually know what time it is and your reputation for mediocrity, tomfoolery or just plain WACKNESS is getting around.

So here are some tips for those of you that are doing it wrong and undermining your own brand with lameness:

Stop Name-Dropping

If you go to a conference where you’re glad-handing with hundreds of people, stop Twittering about ONLY the ******* CELEBRITIES you met or people who you’re trying to suck up to. If you pose for 80 pictures with “The People” on your camera and then only upload the ones where you’re with stars, YOU SUCK! If every time you post something to Facebook, it’s an advertisement for yourself, your clients, or someone whose **** you’re riding, you look like exactly what you are.. A SHILL, and everybody knows it and nobody likes it.

On top of that, you’re actually doing your clients a disservice. I automatically ignore all media from shills because I know they’re trying to push something. If you think you’re getting your clients exposure by being a walking advertisement, you’re wrong. You’re getting them IGNORED, because they aligned themselves with YOU, and you’ve proven that you don’t give a flying **** about people other than using them for “eyeballs” or “hits”.

I don’t give a damn when your next concert is if the last time I heard from you it was to advertise your previous concert. I don’t give a damn that your client is doing a live stream when the last live stream you produced was STRAIGHT GARBAGE, technically AND content-wise. I don’t give a damn that you were standing next to some bigwig at a party and shouted them out on Twitter when they don’t even mention that you were there at all. If I cared about that, I’d read TMZ, not your lame, obvious, redundant, non-progressive blog or twitter posts.

Pay Attention IRL

If you go to a tweetup, DO NOT spend the entire time on your ******* laptop. :/ Act as if you have a life other than being online or just stay your ass at home. This goes *TRIPLE* if you happen to be the ******* GUEST. OF. HONOR. of the tweetup. If people are showing up to a location to meet *YOU*, make ******* SURE that you spend as much time as humanly possible interacting with them. Handle your online business BEFORE or AFTER the meetup. At least act as if you give a damn about people who pay attention to you that aren’t stars that you can try to get props for by Twittering their names all over creation.

I guarantee you that it’s “The Little People” that have more props on the back-channel than the celebrities do. You know why?… hahaha Because there are MORE LITTLE PEOPLE THAN CELEBRITIES! :D .. Think about that.

When you name-drop about a celebrity, who do you think RTs your post and sends it to Facebook or wherever? Other Celebrities?… Nope!.. It’s The Little People. Meanwhile, what the commoners are SAYING is that you’re a JERK and you’re nothing like you present yourself to be online. The next time you pull the same stunt, the word goes out again, and again and again until people accept rumor as fact that you’re an actor and what you say online is as valid as “Fake Steve Jobs”.

Also.. I’m not saying to pay attention to commoners because it’s good public relations. I’m saying that the respect or disrespect that you show your audience IRL is way more important than writing something on the internet. I met this chick one time that’s very talented and I’m a fan of hers, but when I introduced myself to her, she didn’t even say what her name was. That was lame enough as-is, but she’s a performer. It’s her *JOB* to put her name out in public so people come to her shows and buy her media. I was like “How lame is this chick that she’s not even pubbing herself when a commoner (s far as SHE knows) walks up to her and says ‘Hello’?”. As talented as she is, her IRL presentation SUCKED and I immediately became an un-fan. Not of her media, but way more importantly, of her as a person.

Brand Yourself Consistently

It’s kind of funny to me when people ask me why I have so much Google Juice for Bill and for Cammack. It’s really very simple.

Everything I do has my name on it.

It’s completely astounding to me that these so-called Social Media Experts EPICALLY FAIL at branding themselves consistently, which is probably the MOST BASIC thing they should be doing. Anybody you see branding themselves as BillCammack and TheBillCammack and TheRealBillCammack and BillC and BCammack and BConline and TwitterBill and BlipTVCammack and SocialBill and BillYahoo and YoutuBill IS. A. *******. IDIOT! Dead up, they’re IDIOTS! :D

Select ONE NAME and stick to it. Select ONE AVATAR and stick to it. Select ONE GRAVATAR and stick to it. Don’t make people guess who wrote something or guess how to find you when the next major platform is launched. Make sure you have a Google Profile so your name shows up under a basic Google search, even if you don’t have any props for your actual blog or site.

Stop Padding Your Stats

Originally (and I wasn’t down with Twitter when it first started, but I believe my account is three years old now), the number of people following you on Twitter meant something because there was no reason for people to follow people whose opinions they didn’t care about.

Once it became a status symbol to have more Twitter followers than someone else, people started padding their stats. They way they did this was to follow anybody that wrote anything on the general timeline. We all knew who was doing this because they were pretty much following twice the number of people that were following them, or to put it another way, for every two RANDOM PEOPLE that they followed, one person was following them back.

This is how some people got high numbers of Twitter followers and came to be regarded as influential when they really aren’t. The evidence of this is when they do a call to action and their tens of thousands of “followers” only yield fewer than 100 visitors to their live stream or fewer than 10 comments on their blog post.

What these people didn’t count on was that they would eventually be judged by PASSIONATE followers instead of RANDOM followers. They didn’t expect that Twitter was going to create lists based on relevance to a particular industry or topic. They didn’t realize that adding a bunch of randoms was going to make them look like what they were… People thad added a bunch of people JUST to entice those people to add them back.

Eventually, Twitter caught on to this and shuttered that behavior. Unfortunately, the next big thing was the Twitter Suggested User List (SUL), which lots of people rode to fame and glory, ending up with hundreds of thousands if not millions of followers because everyone who created a new account after that was offered to auto-follow everyone on that list with the click of one button.

The reason y’all need to stop this is because you look dumber instead of smarter having all these “followers” that you can’t convert into anything useful for yourself or your clients. You would be way better off building relationships online or offline with people and adding them because you actually want to hear what they have to say and because you feel that their opinions are valuable to you.

Having said that.. There are lots of people with high follower counts who DIDN’T pad their stats and instead followed BACK everyone that already followed them. Again, these people were obvious because their follower/following ratio remained 1:1 while you could watch the padders stay WAAAAAAAY ahead of their followER count with their followING count while they were building their “community”.

Put Up or Shut Up

It’s not impressive to be able to utilize new technology. It’s impressive to utilize new technology WELL. Nobody cares if you can broadcast via Ustream or Qix live from your smartphone if you’re a boring person and the place you happen to be is as boring as you are. The ROI to your client isn’t in knowing that they CAN use new technology but rather in finding out WHEN and HOW they should use it. The more you upload GARBAGE to your YouTube, Ustream, Vimeo, & Blip accounts, the more clueless you make yourself look.

On top of that, you’re not providing actual ROI to your clients. You’re providing them something to go OOH and AAH about so that they waste their money hiring you to do NOTHING for them because you SUCK at Social Media. Instead of merely showing them that the tools exist, show them what they can do with the tools, why they should use them and when and how they SHOULDN’T use them. Show them with concrete examples of your skillz, which should exist somewhere on your site being that you’re a Social Media Expert, right?

If you’re offering web design services to your clients, your websites had BETTER be pretty good-looking, right? O_o If you’re offering video editing services, you should have examples of videos that you’ve edited, right? If you’re supposed to be on-air-talent, you should have samples of shows that you were on, right?

Trust & Believe that you’re not slick. You’re not fooling anybody that actually knows about Social Media with your lack of content to back up your lofty claims. You’re not fooling anybody with your lack of original ideas, regurgitation, retweets, name-dropping and overall poor emulation of a Social Media Guru.

The way this industry works is that people smile in your face and then talk behind your back. What they’re saying behind your back is their honest impression of you. If your IRL presentation is the same as who you claim to be online, you’re golden. If it isn’t congruent, one of these days (or many of these days) you’re going to miss out on a major opportunity because the person you have the opportunity to pitch to TODAY already heard about your incompetence and/or treachery on the back-channel YESTERDAY.

My suggestion is that you stick to what you actually do well and leave the rest of Social Media to the professionals. If you’re not savvy enough to figure out what you don’t do well enough to charge clients for and guarantee a generous ROI, hire an ACTUAL Social Media Expert to tell you who you are and who you aren’t.

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ok. So you went to the tech conference COUGHsxswCOUGH and you got your drink on and hooked up with that chick, right ;) …

Except the conference isn’t OVER YET, so you actually have to see her the next day ( hate it when THAT happens! :D ).

Here are your top 5 options on how to deal when you run into her today:

Act like you liked it when you didn’t

When your eyes meet, look at her like ” HEYYYYY! :D ” and smile. Extend your right hand so she extends hers, clasp it and use your left hand to pat her on the back. Pull her in close to you for a hug and whisper in her ear “That ish was the bomb last night, yo. Good Lookin’ Out.”

She will feel accomplished and your job is done. You’re now only responsible for winking at her a couple of times and some minor waves from across the room.

Act like you didn’t like it when you did

Calm down. Stop thinking about it. Hold your breath if you need to… Helps you focus on reality, right-now. Give her a nice hug. Remember to let her go. Small-talk with her, then say something like “You know… We got really DRUNK together last night…” or “I really don’t want last night to come between us and our friendship” or “I care about you too much blah blah blah we shouldn’t do that ever again”.

Try to sound sincere when you’re saying this. If you hear your voice trembling because you’re lying, drink some water. Also, if you feel like you’re starting to get aroused again as soon as you see her, skip the “hug” part.

Act like it didn’t happen

Some people have the ability to drink alcohol until their long-term memory gets erased. I mean… That’s what I heard.

Use this to your advantage. Make sure that you have a drink in your hand BEFORE you kick it to her. That way, she can’t tell how blitzed you were before the fact. Also, remember what you talked about with her and how you felt BEFORE you told her to meet you in the ladies’ room.

Now… When you see her coming, access that memory from before you hooked up with her and act like that was the last time you ever saw her. Got that? ok, Good. Look at her, smile and wave at her like a platonic friend. Give her a basic two-arm hug with no kiss on the cheek. Squeeze her tight. Let her go. Look her in the eye and go:

” So… What’d YOU do last night? :D ”

Act like you don’t remember her

Just in case you don’t think you can pull off “Act like it didn’t happen”, roll your relationship all the way back to never having met her IRL at all.

When you see her, dont’ smile. Get this ??? look, like “Is that my Facebook friend, whomever?”, but you’re not really sure if it’s her or not. Prepare a derivative of her name. Like, if her name’s “Annie”, when you get within earshot (nowhere near her), yell out “Annette?”

When her face twists up, like “What’s this idiot talking about?”, go ” It’s ME, [name]… We’re Facebook friends! Nice to meet you, finally, in person! :D ”

This is why you want to start this technique far away. If she believes you forgot her, she’s going to be disappointed. If she thinks you’re trying to get over, she’s going to be MAD! :D Figure this out before you get within arm’s reach so you can decide whether to continue walking towards her or break hard right and call Maverick for backup.

Tell the truth

This is the least-utilized Morning-After option. I mean, actually, the most utilized option is Emergency Contraceptive Pills but that’s a different topic.

If it was good, and you don’t mind her knowing that you’re SPRUNG and riding her bra-strap now, fess up and let her know how good a time you had and how you haven’t stopped thinking about it this whole time. Hopefully, she’ll be honest with you too and it goes where it goes….

If it wasn’t good, I guess you could still use “Act like you didn’t like it”, except you wouldn’t be acting. There are basically two ways you can carry this. You can go the “let her down easy” route, with some kind of “It’s not you, it’s me” statement. This is basically a copout, unless it really WAS you and you didn’t REP-RE-SENT last night! hahaha :D

The other option is to look out for her as your Homie… you know? As a true friend… And go the “Tough Love” route with something like:

“Yo… Have you ever heard of Kegel Exercises?”

~Bill

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On Thursday, January 1st, 2009 at 3:02 pm, I made a post about a client who didn’t pay me the money he owed me. Here is the Recent Visitor Map for just that one article, ~38 hours later (approximately a day and a half):

Click here to view 1048 x 857 image

This is Social Media in Action. “Reach” is now determined by how much time and effort you’re willing to put in to maintain your internet presence.

When it comes to determining “Reach”, the days of “who lives next to that person?” are OVER. The days of “Is he a radio personality or performer or some other type of celebrity?” are *OVER*. Connections are made and maintained virtually.

People are aligning themselves by values, aptitude & beliefs now, instead of by local territory and “Accident of Birth”. The “lines” are being re-drawn as people get to sample other people’s mentalities through reading their blogs, listening to their podcasts, watching their videos and selecting to find out more about people they feel in-tune with.

Jeff Pulver called it his “Social Media Living Room”. He was absolutely right. The people that you know live wherever they live, but we all come together, in various locations… virtual locations.

Sometimes, we meet up IRL, like @ PodCamps or BarCamps or SXSW or TweetUps or meetup.com or Gary’s Guide events. In the meantime, in between time, we’re reading each other’s blogs and communicating with other through social media sites like Twitter, Ning, Facebook, MySpace, etc etc etc.

Here’s an example. One day, a crane fell down in Manhattan, NYC, New York, USA and crushed a couple of buildings and killed a few people. I found out about that on Twitter, because of someone that doesn’t even LIVE in NYC. Twitter beat the local news, beat phone calls, beat EVERYTHING, because as soon as one person found out about it and posted, everyone on their followers list was notified and “ReTweeted” (RT) so that everyone on THEIR followers list could find out as well. Depending on how quickly you set your polling, you could be informed THIRD-HAND in about three minutes. :D

Similarly, a bridge fell down in Minnesota or something. Local NYC news would NEEEEEEVER have covered that, and if so, it would have been way late and way disinterested, such as “look what happened to those people way over there…. in other news…”. I found out about that way before local coverage because of Twitter. There were people that I follow who were directly affected by it and sent the information out. People that I follow went to the scene and filmed the event.

This is why integrity is the order of the day. You’d rather have people spread around the world… literally… that you’re a stand-up person and that you do the right thing, whether that’s business-wise or socially. If you’re the type of person that likes to stiff people on invoices… Trust & Believe, it gets around. If you’re the type of guy that likes to say the same rap lines to several chicks that all know each other….. Trust & Believe, it gets around. If you’re the type of female that hooks up with a new guy every other week, and they all know each other… Trust & Believe, it gets around.

Don’t feel all spiffy because nobody tells you the real deal to your face. The Back-Channel is alive and thriving. Don’t think that Australia doesn’t know what happened in NYC. Don’t think that NYC doesn’t know what happened in Minnesota. Think that you need to carry yourself with integrity & CLASS, because you never know who’s paying attention to your shenanigans and putting you ON BLAST to the entire universe.

~Bill Cammack, January 03, 2009

Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
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For some reason, they’re still outputting SXSW podcasts. This morning, I listened to one that was released four days ago, entitled “Logos: Why They’re Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business”. I thought it was an odd and wacky title for a panel discussion, so I decided to check it out. I also wanted to see if what they had to say had any relevance to my personal involvement with logos, or the lack thereof.

Here’s the direct link to the mp3 of the discussion.

I thought the presenters made valid points, especially when it comes to startups and not already-established companies. If nobody knows you, your company or what you or your company does, there’s no need to spend a lot of time on a logo. What does your logo symbolize? Nothing. Because you don’t have any ‘cred’ yet. Let’s say you’re selling soap. You have no track record, so nobody’s going to be looking for your logo as a symbol of excellence. You can put your box on the shelf next to already-established brands as well as generic store soap, and your logo won’t help you sell your soap AT.ALL. Once you get down the line and you’ve established yourself, people might recognize your logo and pull your box off of the shelf as a preference over other brands.

Another problem occurs if your company changes focus AFTER creating a logo. If your logo is a boot and then your company becomes a human search engine firm, that boot’s no longer relevant and either needs to be phased out (costing you more time and money) or worked around.

A third issue isn’t with the logo itself, but in how people access your site to begin with. How much good is your logo doing you if people are only spending SECONDS on your site at a time? Where is your logo placed? What size is it? What does it tell people about your business within that couple of seconds? What do people really look at during that time? Graphics? Text of the information they were searching for?

There were more good points and the audience brought up counter-points, but again, the logos they referenced were of already-established companies, like Dell. Dell already has a track record, so seeing a symbol of theirs might prompt you to pull their item off of the shelf. If it had been a logo for the “Mr. Startup Computer”, it’s not going to mean anything without a track record.

After I listened to this hour-long discussion, I thought about my own experiences in “the space”.

When I started ReelSolid.TV on May 27th, 2006, it was after quite a few discussions with several people whose opinions I valued. I had hours of discussions about focus, the types of videos, transparency… everything that we could think of that it would have meant to take what I already do for broadcast and corporate clients and put it on the net.

I decided that I wanted to do a ‘station’ or a ‘channel’ instead of doing Bill Cammack Televison or the Bill Cammack Show, because I didn’t intend to stick with ReelSolid.TV exclusively, and it didn’t make sense to me to hand off a show with my name on it to other people to produce and edit. Once I had the name, though, I felt like I needed a logo. I had made something with a physical film reel, and we kicked around the idea of using a rock, as in “solid like a rock”. For some reason, as important as I felt a logo was at the time, I didn’t have time to wait to figure that out and started doing my videos without an actual logo, yet with a specific font I liked to use for my opens and closes.

I also had ReelSolid.TV burned into my videos. I figured out pretty early on, thanks to the videoblogging group that people like to rip RSS feeds and act like you uploaded your work to their site. So the way I see it is “Take it all you want. It still has my name on it. Thanks for the free publicity. :)”

So I put in work as “ReelSolid.TV” without a logo, figuring I’d get around to it at some point. On April 01, 2007, I met Cruxy.com‘s Nathan Freitas. We exchanged names, which neither of us recognized. I had never heard of Cruxy.com either. When I told Nate I did ReelSolid.TV, he was like “OH! I’ve seen your show…” and brought up a video that I had done in December 2006 about men’s suits @ Phil’s 1908 here in Manhattan:

I had remembered that someone had given me props for the video and I had thanked them for it on a forum. When I got home and checked… lo and behold, it had been Nate I had electronically communicated with ~4 months ago, but since it was text-based, with no images attached, I didn’t know WHO it was that I was interacting with.

More importantly… Immediately upon noticing Nate’s different reaction to my actual name and the brand I had been building for 10 months at that point, I realized that whenever I decided to step out from behind ReelSolid.TV, I was going to be anonymous and basically would have to mention ReelSolid anytime I wanted someone to understand “who I was” and what I’ve done in the space. From that moment on, I switched my “brand” from ReelSolid.TV to BilCammack.com and recently, to “Bill Cammack”.

What that has to do with logos is that if I had attached one to ReelSolid.TV like I intended to from the beginning, now, I would have been Bill Cammack with the logo of a rock. :D booooo hissssss. On top of that, Nate might not have recognized ReelSolid.TV as a brand if my logo had been, say, a rock with “R S” behind it. It would have been another level of abstraction that I would have had to climb out from under if I wanted my propers for my accomplishments.

Ultimately, what ended up working for me was leaving out logos altogether. I saw that people were already ‘confused’ as far as what a ReelSolid.TV production meant. In my particular case, it’s in my best interest for people to know the name of the person involved with the production. That way, they can google me and I maintain my position for “Bill” behind Gates & Clinton.

Having said that… I *did* end up using a logo of sorts. I use twitter by the website because I parse entries visually. I can tell by scrolling which icons represent entries I need to stop and read and which I don’t. I found myself getting thrown off when people changed their icons. :) I would stop to read something, then realize it’s someone I’m not reading, memorize their icon and keep rolling. Also, on other social sites, I would realize that people were using different icons for themselves and, let’s call it “diluting their visual brand”. I decided that unless I had a strategic reason not to, I was going to use the same icon when I joined social sites.

So, similar to how my name became my brand name, my picture became my brand logo. This has had the interesting effect of people recognizing me the first time I meet them, but not being sure where they saw me before. It’s also had the effect of my friend Sean Bohan ‘complaining’ that every time he goes to some site, I have a presence there. :D

As far as this website, most of the hits I get are from people searching for specific information. Just like the panel stated, people dip into my site and dip right back out. :) There’s like a 20% chance that they’ll go to a second page and about a 0% chance that they’ll go to a third page. :D So a logo has nothing to do with my website. People either show up here and know whose site it is, or they don’t know and they don’t care. Mostly, it’s people that are searching for answers to their questions that they find on google and aren’t coming to personally socialize with the site owner, so I haven’t bothered to use my uniform icon/logo for this site.

So, did I agree with the panel? Yes. Other than “Target”, which is really simple, I can’t recall a logo for Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Ning… I know the icon for iTunes… Basically, I don’t pay attention to logos at all. I think that until your business is in the position of demonstrating value to your potential clients, a logo does nothing for you as it represents nothing at all. When you ARE generating added value, I think you STILL want to consider whether you want to dilute people’s understanding of who it is that’s really making things happen, especially if you’re doing everything yourself.

Like they said on the panel, time is money. Time wasted creating a meaningless (to consumers/clients) logo would be better spent on improving the technical aspects of your app/product/site or decreasing the amount of time before your launch. If you HAVE to have a logo, make something decent-looking and QUICK or pay a student a few dollars to spend THEIR time creating something for you. Most likely, potential clients will respond more favorably to a solid app without a fancy logo than they will to an app that looks nice, but has a spotty performance record due to misallocation of development time.

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Lux & Bill, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.

Lux Alptraum: Woman with THE SCOOP on the SXSW haps! :D

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