Have you ever come across a company logo that looked like a jumbled mess of drawings? Where there were so many elements competing for your attention that you didn’t even know where to look or what it all meant? The job of your logo is to communicate what your business is all about in an instant. But if you try to say too much in that instant, it’s more likely your customers and prospects will either not get the message or get the wrong message.

The key to avoiding a confusing logo is to keep it simple. Here are three easy steps to create a clear, uncomplicated logo as part of a corporate identity development strategy — a logo that communicates your key message to your target audience:

1. Don’t try to say too much. Your logo should tell the story of your brand. That story is made up of four parts:
      
   • Your company’s personality
     
   • The type of services or products you offer
     
   • What distinguishes you from your competition
     
   • Who you can best help

   Once you develop your brand story, scale it back to one or possibly two main ideas that you want customers and prospects to instantly see in your logo. If you’re trying to tell a complicated story, then your logo design will reflect that and have little impact. Again, simple is best.

2. Don’t include too many details in the icon. A logo that contains a lot of visual elements may turn out to be too complicated. Keep the number of shapes, lines, and other design elements at a minimum to make the image as clear and clean as possible. If you include too many design elements, it’s more likely that when you scale the logo down, some of the finer details will be blurred, and it may not print well.
3. Keep the icon and the name of your company separate. If you layer your company’s name on top of the icon in your logo, it can be difficult to read. Moreover, if you include text on top of the icon, the concept may get lost. Separating the image and the company name will make both easier to read and understand.
   

There are 3 main types of logos that a consultant can choose to use for their business. Each has advantages and disadvantages for the consultant. Here are explanations and samples of each type, to help you choose the best match for your consultancy.

Combination logo: The most effective option for creating a consultant’s logo is to make a logo that contains both a graphic and your company name. This approach is called a combination logo. This type of logo contains both a memorable logo graphic that tells the story of who you are, what you do, and what makes you different as well as spelling out your business name for easy identification. One big advantage of this type of logo is that it combines an image and text – and having both combined will make the logo more memorable for viewers.

Text logo: A logo can be as simple as having your company name typeset in a unique font. The company name can have a small graphic embellishment – like an underline, or it can appear on a colored background. This is a simple approach that can work for many consultants. If you do go this route, you’ll miss out on some of the benefits that you can get by including a graphic in your company name – namely, that your logo won’t have an image in it to help clients remember it. However, if your company name is long, this approach will help you to keep the logo as clean and simple as possible. And, if your consultancy’s services or goals may change over time, there is no danger of your icon becoming inappropriate – since you don’t have one.

Symbol-only logo: You can design a logo that’s a symbol only (think Apple Computers or Nike). This approach is not recommended for consultants, though, because this type of logo takes a big investment in brand education to build up the association of your business name with the logo. Without that association, the logo will not have any meaning to the viewer, and will not help to build your brand.

I discovered a new tool that I already love — TBUZZ. It makes it easy for you to Tweet about the Web pages you visit without having to go to Twitter or TweetDeck or similar tools. Here’s how it works:

• Once installed, TBUZZ appears in your browser toolbar.
• When on a Web page that you want to share with your Twitter followers, simply click the TBUZZ icon in your toolbar.
• A TBUZZ window opens, with an already-shortened URL to the page and available character count.
• Type what you want to convey and click update, and that’s it. You’ve updated your Twitter feed without leaving the page you were reading.

TBUZZ also shows you others who are “TBUZZing” about the page and what they said.

A Note about Installing It on IE

Arc90, the company who developed TBUZZ offers a nice how-to video on its home page that shows how to install TBUZZ. For non-IE users, you simply drag and drop the prominent TBUZZ button on the home page to your browser toolbar, give the bookmark a name, and it appears in your bookmarks and in your browser’s toolbar.

For IE, there’s an extra step. After the link appears in your bookmarks, right click on it, and then click on “Add to Favorites Bar.” TBUZZ then appears in your browser toolbar.

Check out TBUZZ

MarketingProfs, a Women in Consulting (WIC) partner, posted a useful article by Clay McDaniel that details 13 essential social-media “listening tools,” separating them by free and paid-for. If you’ve ever wondered how you can “listen” to all the chatter about your brand or your clients’ brands, check out this article.

Read “13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’“

Okay, I admitted in a previous post on Nine Twitter Tips for Business that I’m not someone who follows everyone who follows me because it’s the polite thing to do. So of course, I would find this nice little post on the TerraFarm blog to my liking.

Here are Tom’s top 10, all of which are worth keeping in mind as you start to Tweet:

1. Your picture hasn’t been set.
2. Your name is comprised of works like money, cash, free, sex….
3. You auto-DM me when I follow you.
4. Your Tweets are full of foul language.
5. You constantly lash out at me or others.
6. You constantly push your own product, service or blog, and tweet about nothing else
7. You’re never positive. Ever.
8. Your bio is empty and you live “nowhere.”
9. You haven’t Tweeted in months.
10. You are never “live.”

Read the full “10 Reasons to Unfollow/Not Follow Someone on Twitter” article

Jason Snell of Macworld.com wrote a nice overview on nine ways to use Twitter for business. It’s a great introduction for those who are unsure how Twitter can be used for business.

I agree with everything he says for the most part, with the caveat that you should assess any recommendations in light of your own audience, as well as what makes sense for your business. Consumer companies will have different needs from business-to-business companies who will have different needs from consultants and so on. The key is to view Twitter as a tool and not all tools work for all people.

The one recommendation I disagree with in part is “# 3: Follow people who are relevant…it’s polite to follow people. And by following people you are creating an ecosystem — people will see who you are following and consider those as suggestions for users they should follow as well.”

Yes, you should follow relevant people. And it may be polite to follow someone who follows you, but is it in your best interest to follow everyone who follows you? No is my philosophy. Follow people who make sense for you to follow.  For example, I won’t follow people who: 

• Never Tweet anything of interest to me
• Neglect to provide a bio and/or a link to more information about them
• Are only interested in selling me “stuff”
• Bombard followers with a plethora of Tweets daily – there are people who post 30 or more times in a day; and that’s way more than I want to here from anyone person

These are some of my personal guidelines for following people. They’re based on my reasons for using Twitter. I view Twitter as an information resource. So for me, it’s about sharing and receiving information.

Here are the high-level tips:

• Don’t automate it
• Be conversational
• Follow people who are relevant
• Make sure your people are on Twitter, and refer to them
• Answer your mentions
• Search for your name
• Consider creating sub-accounts for sections of your business or customer base
• Use Twitter to ask your customers questions…and get good answers
• Be a good Twitter citizen

Read the full “Nine Twitter Tips for Business” article

For those of you managing a WordPress blog but aren’t backing up your site, Christopher Penn posted a nice article on how to back up your WordPress blog in 60 seconds. When reading the article, make sure to read the couple of comments at the end that refer to also backing up database files (pasted below, too) 

“Yeah… I use a plug-in that automatically backs up the whole database and emails it to me. Daily. I save a month’s worth of backups so if something goes ugly or gets hacked, I can walk it back to when it WORKED.”

“Please be aware, though, that the WP export function only backs up internal-to-WordPress portions of your database. If you use plug-ins that store information in DB fields (such as PodPress), this will not keep that data safe. For that, I suggest you use WP-DB-Backup.”

Read the full “How to Back Up Your WordPress Blog in 60 Seconds” article

For those consultants who have launched a Facebook page or are considering doing so, this article on allfacebook.com reviews a new measurement tool released by Facebook called “Post Quality.” According to Facebook, it measures “how engaging your content is to Facebook users. A higher Post Quality indicates material that better engages users.”

For those unfamiliar with Facebook Pages, these are different from the personal pages that most people recognize. The capabilities are very similar to personal pages, but Facebook Pages are for organizations, companies of all sizes, consultants, etc.

Read the full “Facebook Introduces Post Quality Score for Pages” on allfacebook.com.

instantShift.com posted a nice article showcasing what they believe to be 125+ incredible Twitter themes. I thought I’d share them on WIC’s blog to show readers what’s possible with Twitter themes.

http://www.instantshift.com/2009/01/18/125-incredible-twitter-themes/

Are you in the market for a great business read or a few?

Here are the ones included in the bounteous basket of books one lucky bidder got at the April WIC Silent Auction. Check them out!

• The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth by Fred Reichheld
• The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
• Million Dollar Consulting and The Global Consultant, both by Alan Weiss
• Marketing Your Career: Positioning, Packaging and Promoting Yourself For Success by WIC’s Linda Popky
• Outliers and Blink, both by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Art of Possibility: Transforming Personal and Professional Life, by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
• Market This!: An Effective 90-Day Marketing Tool by WIC’s Sherry Prescott-Willis
• The One Minute Organizer Plain & Simple by Donna Smallin

There was a DVD in the basket that you may want to catch, too: How to Make Your Business More Successful by Michael Levin.