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The Value of a Website's Tagline

uniqueDelphineThere’s nothing new about taglines.  They’ve been used in different types of media for quite some time as a way to summarize the entire company/product/organization in a short bit of space/time.  On a website, the tagline is usually a short bit of a text near the logo to describe what that site is. They’re the first glimpse into exactly what it is you do.  If the tagline isn’t clear, visitors will have to spend more time figuring that out (which they may not).  Often visitors enter your site somewhere other than the homepage and the tagline may be the only real description on the page where they do enter.

A good tagline should:

  • Be clear & informative
  • Be short & concise (six to eight words)
  • Differentiate your business
  • Offer at least one clear benefit
  • Be personable and catchy (hopefully a bit clever)
  • Be unique
  • Stand on its own

This may seem like a lot of weight on just a short phrase, but good taglines are invaluable for differentiating yourself and quickly describing what it is you do.  Once you have a good one you’ll be able to use it on all your marketing materials and advertising.  If you don’t know how well your tagline works, try showing someone (or telling) your tagline and see what it is they think you do.

How do you use your tagline?

(photo by Delphine – Very very busy :/ @ Flickr CC)

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Book Review – Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

groundswellcover
Ever wonder how to effectively use social media for your business?  Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, of Forrester Research, provide real-world information and data on how to make it social media work for your business in their book, groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies (Amazon affiliate link).  The book is packed with data and experience from twenty-five cases, spanning different types of industries, companies and organizations.

If you’re not sure exactly why social media is important to business, Li and Bernoff start off explaining why it is – they term the emergence of social media technologies into the mainstream as the “groundswell.”  Once you understand exactly what the groundswell is, they explain how it can be tapped to help your organization.  The last part of the book focuses on how using the groundswell will change your company and what the future looks like.

One of the strengths of this book is that it doesn’t have a one-size-fits all social media strategy that works for all organizations and companies.  Instead, it examines the use of social media on a behavorial level – different types of people interact with social media in different ways.  Some types will login to a social site every day but never actually interact.  Others post regularly.  Understanding what types of people you have in your particular target audience is key for crafting a social media strategy that will actually work.  The book runs through the different types of people and their typical interactions with social media and how to use this information to craft a winning strategy.

While this book is a year old, the underlying information is still extremely valuable to anyone looking to tie social media in with business measurements, such as ROI.  There’s also a website which provides updated information via a blog and some tools for understanding the possible makeup of your target audience, based on industry and age groups.  I highly recommend this book to anyone considering using social media for their business – it will give you a good idea of what needs to be done to be successful and the twenty-five cases provide good real-world examples of possible ways to use social media for your business.

If you’ve read this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (Amazon affiliate link)

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Are You Doing What Matters?

growthiChazWhile in the self-checkout lane at Meijers today I started thinking about rfid again.  Wouldn’t it be cool if we could just walk right out the door and everything in our basket would be instantly scanned and charged?  IBM made a commercial about the very possibility.  Think about the time savings!

There’s no denying that what Tetherball is doing is interesting to marketers.  But if people aren’t willing to use the device, it won’t be of any use to marketers.  (there are lots of things that are interesting to marketers that no one else wants).  So, what if instead of spending time on a device that seems cool, they could somehow actually make it useful to the people using it?  Wouldn’t that matter more?  Wouldn’t that help make the device more accepted and actually make it more useful to marketers?

What about what you’re doing?  Does it matter?  How can you make it matter more?  Is there something you could be doing to accelerate your progress?

(photo by iChaz @ Flickr CC)

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