The thing is: if you’re a husband, your wife and mother are two entirely different people, with different needs and desires. I’ve never met a woman who aspired to cut up her husband’s meat, and I’ve never met a mother who wanted to marry her son (we know what they smell like at age 10).

And if you’re designing for a brand, it’s really important to remember that your brand user is not usually the end user. Look at the image above: it’s my own interpretation of Harley Davidson’s two target users.

Harley clearly has two user groups: their aspirational brand user and their actual user. As the brand user, the impossibly handsome and rugged Marlon Brando is used to inform their brand’s personality, position and promise. In the case of web design, this sets the direction of visual and emotional design, copy and imagery.

But if you think about it, Marlon Brando types aren’t really the volume customer of Harley, are they? No – they’re too busy riding to live and being impossibly handsome (and sadly passed away). The people who actually buy Harleys are the people who can afford them: higher income people, usually men, with cash to spare.

This is the businessman on the right. He likes to think of himself as Marlon Brando when he’s on his Harley. He’s probably a 9 to 5 businessman, and he has completely different needs and desires than somebody who spends most of his time on the open road, brooding attractively and causing trouble.

Brand Users are aspirational users, based on general market research. It’s the brand saying “if you want to be like this user, interact with our brand.”

End Users are the actual people using the product or service, based on specific research like surveys and customer feedback. They’re based in reality. It’s users telling the brand “this is who we are.”

You want to make sure you’re not using a brand profile for your project’s information design, interaction design and usability testing. A few pointers:

• It’s common for marketing teams to create brand profiles based on the brand user. Insist on creating a persona that represents the actual end user, and make sure everyone on the team knows the difference.
• Use your brand profile to inform visual design, copy and imagery; use your persona to direct functionality, content strategy, site structure, and labeling. Interaction design should be informed by both brand and end users.
• For the purposes of UX design, keep the number of your end user personas low: no more than 3. When you design for everybody, you design for nobody. (Keep your long list of user types for validating functionality at the page level.)

Also remember: your user probably isn’t Marlon Brando (sadly), and your wife ain’t your momma (thankfully).

The Cringeworthy Tweet

Last week, Kenneth Cole himself posted this very icky tweet, evidently trying to jump on Twitter’s #egypt hashtag in order to promote his spring line.

Of course, Twitter members then the mainstream media jumped all over it, and today Advertising Age used it as a shining example of the Seven Stages of Comitting a Social Media Sin.

Made me smile.

“If we start treating people like people, and not assume that they’re horses; you know, slower, smaller, better-smelling horses… we can actually build organizations that make us and our work lives better off, and I think they have the promise of making our world just a little bit better.”

Thanks to Ann for this!

mkeUX: Hugfest!

Last night was mkeUX‘s inaugural meeting, and it was great! About 30 Milwaukee-area UX’ers, designers, developers, project managers and strategists gathered at Lightburn for a talk on content strategy and a few barley pops.

After my kickoff content strategy presentation, Appropriate, Inc.’s Margot Bloomstein schooled us all on how to sell CS into projects. As my friends at mkeUX say, Hugfest!

Here’s the presentation I gave:

Back in the early days of interactive, all we talked about was HTML— the simple way to breathe life into website and, by extension, user experience. Quickly we realized HTML wasn’t enough. Websites needed to be easier to get around and find things in, so we started talking about usability. But before long, even usability wasn’t enough. People began to clamor for a user experience that’s beyond beautiful, useful and thrilling. Websites packed with pertinent information — that also reflect our clients’ brands, and, of course, their marketing goals.

Flash-forward to 2009. We aren’t just designing website user experiences any more. We’re designing experiences for any number of online, mobile and offline properties. Consumers have grown to expect all of the things we’re designing to be beautiful, fun and easy to use. That stuff’s a given.

So what’s the new bar? Beautiful, enjoyable and usable also has to deliver useful. And by this we mean more than simply easy to use: actually useful in a consumer’s daily life. When users visit a website, application or any other interactive property, the first question they’re asking is “yeah, and so?” or in other words “What’s the point?” or “Why should I care?” And if we expect anybody to read, linger, return later or talk about our brands, we’d better be prepared to answer these questions. These are questions any copywriter worth their salt should be asking whenever they write copy for all media. And consumers are expecting deep, meaningful and resonant answers to be somewhere that’s easy accessible. Basically, before they buy, they want to know everything.

In 2010 and into 2011, we want you to think of getting — and holding — your consumer’s attention as a competitive sport. If your site doesn’t have a strong plan for your content — a clear purpose, call to action, a reason to stay, believe and return — you will lose.

This is what content strategy is all about.

What is content strategy?
Content strategy is a way of planning communication so that it meets specific objectives. Instead of simply organizing pages into groups of content and writing copy at the last minute, an effective content strategy will set the direction for the creation, delivery and guidelines of all content on a website.

And according to Google and content strategy evangelist Kristina Halvorson, it’s the Next Big Thing.

Why can’t we just fill the copy in later?
Look: the entire Internet is filled with nothing but ill-conceived content, a lot of it exceptionally useless and irrelevant. Most of the time, this is because the creators of these websites suffer from Content Delay Syndrome. CDS is when you push copywriting, imagery and video to the very end of a project as executables rather than strategically planned concepts, so that content is treated as an afterthought. Shoehorning content into a website this way often undoes all the careful thought and planning that went into the rest of the project. And it’s common.

Real, thought-out and meaningful content on a site creates a good user experience. It’s best when it’s concise, purposeful and directed toward a specific audience. And that takes planning.

The benefits of benefit-rich content.
A well-planned content strategy makes your site trustworthy, engaging and useful, which is good for brands and their users, of course. But even more importantly, when any company is in the middle of a project — like updating or creating a website — a funny thing happens when that content is clearly defined, planned and communicated to the team: the team gains consensus and does better work toward common objectives and final goals. If everyone knows why they’re working on a piece of content and how it fits into the larger project, their work is better, more focused and more complete even before it’s actually completed.

And if project stakeholders are external to your organization (as most of HDC’s are), a great content strategy can also create a shared understanding with clients of where the project is going. This makes everyone happy.

So, what does content strategy look like?
Erin Scime, a content strategist at Huge, (renowned design and user strategy shop), created this great sketch (click to enlarge) to describe the lifecycle of a content strategy. Looks complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, if you’re doing any kind of interface planning, you’re probably already doing some of it. Have you ever done a content inventory? Put real headlines in a wireframe? Asked “what is this for?” If the answer is yes to any of these, you’re already on your way.

At HDC, we’ve created content strategies in a variety of ways: incorporated them into wireframe notes, took a picture of a whiteboard sketch and written fat outlined documents. We approach content strategy as communication instead of a deliverable. That way, we can focus on shared understanding.

To sum it up
Creating a great user experience takes careful planning around technology, structure, design and content. Don’t let poorly conceived copy, video, photography or other empty content take down the worth and probably months’ to years’ worth of other planning; taking your content to the strategic level from the very start will make the difference between the mass of Internet filler and something that cuts clutter and actually matters.

In fact, there does not seem to be a correlation at all between follower count and influence.

Of course, anybody on Twitter for more than a few days already knows this: the funniest, most interesting and engaging Twitterers don’t care how many people are following them. They’re there because they’re curious, interested in other people and like to share. And they’re highly influential because of it – everybody pays attention when they speak, because it’s sure to be something good.

And on the flip side: mass followings, spam and begging for “re-tweets” are a surefire way to lose friends and alienate social media people.

You see, Twitter isn’t really anything more than a big party, taken to the internet. The funny and interesting people get all the attention, and the ones desperate to make friends are avoided like that cousin at the cookout trying recruit for his new pyramid scheme.

So why do marketers continue to obsess over friend, fan and follower count? Because it’s far easier to measure numbers than a person’s charm. Problem is, the old marketing measurements don’t apply in social media. But the old-fashioned ideas of being interesting and a good listener do.

Read more about the study at ReadWriteWeb.

I’ll be helping to pop beers and ping pong on June 9th when Margot Bloomstein and I are there to chat about content strategy. Head on down!

Content Strategy on the Realz
Wednesday June 9th, 6pm
Lightburn Design
325 East Chicago Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202 (map)
More info: http://mkeux.com/

The answer is nuanced. Social media can be a marketing tool, but it is also PR, customer service, focus groups and networking, among other things.

And if brands use the wrong approach at the wrong time, they can make huge missteps – and with all those millions of people watching, it can be disastrous. Router manufacturer Belkin learned this lesson the hard way when they tried to pay a blogger for good product reviews.

So what is social media?

Advertising

The simplest way for brands to dip their toes into the social media world is to purchase advertising on social media properties. Once a brand does the proper research to learn where their customers are going online, they can participate in any number of social media display ads: blog advertising networks and Facebook or YouTube ads, to name a few.

As a matter of fact, a number of new technologies are emerging that will allow customers to purchase directly from Facebook, blogs and other areas on the web. Clothing retailer Charlotte Russe is using this technology to promote selected products on its Facebook page.

Online advertising in social media is easily tracked and can be measured easily against investment. It’s also the place where brands can participate in social media with minimal effort and familiar tactics.

PR

Brands crave buzz. Word of mouth is the cheapest and most effective way to get customers’ attention. A great way to do that online is to approach influential bloggers the same way PR reps do in the offline world: develop a relationship, send products, and pitch blog ideas to them.

But beware: offering to pay for blog coverage is a no-no, and can severely backfire. Any influential blogger maintains a respectable division between editorial and advertising, meaning they would never blog about your brand for pay. And if they did, nobody would read their blogs any more.

Customer Service
Social media won’t fix all your brand’s problems, but it can provide a great way to find out what’s working and what’s not. To do this, brands must be prepared to not only speak through social media, but listen and act quickly. JetBlue is a great example of customer service on Twitter gone right; the company regularly interacts and listens to customers on its Twitter account. In fact, they’ve been able to very publicly provide great customer service through Twitter, even quickly providing a wheelchair to a tweeting JetBlue passenger. The halo effect of this one incident has been fantastic PR for the brand.

Focus Groups
Sometimes your customers are the best sources for fresh ideas. Brands can use social media for idea generation and collaboration, too. When Starbucks began experimenting with social media, My Starbucks Idea was one of the first pieces they developed to give the customer a voice in product development. But you don’t have to develop an independent community to gather customer ideas and feedback; it’s just as easy to gather feedback by asking customers to respond to posts, comments and polls on Facebook, Twitter and other social sharing sites.

Networking
Social media can of course be leveraged for online networking or cultivating productive relationships for business. And just like in the offline world, if you intend to participate in social media networking, It’s helpful to think of it as a big industry party.

If you can approach and maintain relationships with online influencers, online networking can help spread your brand’s message organically. Observe the rules of a party, and you’ll do just fine: be polite and respectful, listen and contribute, don’t “hard sell” and most importantly, be fun and interesting. A networking expert to follow is Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Tony’s unpretentious style and willingness to have conversations has earned him a 1.5 million devoted followers of his Twitter feed and a #6 spot in the social media hall of fame

A Pulpit
What matters to your company? What is your brand interested in? Social media is a great way to communicate to customers what makes your brand tick, while inviting them into your conversations. Whole Foods uses their blog to talk about what matters to their brand: green action, healthy tips and food news. It’s sincere, useful and interesting.

Beware of the temptation to use social media to simply push out company news. Your customers will quickly see this kind of communication for what it is – shameless self promotion – and tune you out. Providing genuine thought leadership and interesting content will keep your customers coming back to get to know you better.

(this post originally appeared in Active Minds.)