The celebration was marked by the biggest event in Harley-Davidson India’s history – the first National H.O.G. Rally in Goa, from  31 January to 3 February, 2013. To amplify the event further, since the entire community couldn’t be with us in Goa, we took the celebrations to them via Facebook.  To create buzz and build anticipation for the event, an exciting cover photo campaign was initiated. We also shared live content from the event, in the form of quotes from the participants, photographs and videos.

The celebrations continued even after the ride with the ’110 Years of Freedom’ Facebook application, inviting the fans to share what freedom meant to each one of them, and we received 770 amazing entries.

The campaign so far has added over 190,000 new fans, reached 4.8 million people, and created 10.4 million impressions. More than 354,000 people engaged with the brand.

The celebrations continue with more events planned through the year. Watch the video of the case study here:

You can also read the detailed case study here.

My colleague and co-presenter Amita Malhotra had shared The Content Challenge Talk at #Sankalp Unconvention 2013 (Part 1) here.

From a dip-stick research by Intellecap, Engagement was found to be another area of challenge for social enterprises in their endeavours on social media. Through this section of our workshop, we identified and suggested workarounds for the following issues at hand: 

-      How to choose and ‘bet’ on the ‘right’ platforms

-      How to amplify and strengthen via strong network of ambassadors and influencers

-      How to leverage social beyond online

-      How to resolve the ‘Facebook Problem’

Here’s a slide deck for ‘Block 2-The Engagement Challenge’

Do share your thoughts.

The presentation was in two parts – The Content Challenge and The Engagement Challenge and as part of the segment, Alister D Monte from the Milaap team shared a case study from their learnings from their programme.

Here is the slide deck that I presented alongside my colleague Jyotika Malhotra at the workshop. These were some key themes we spoke about -

- Issues at hand with Content
- Approach for Content Scalability
- What is Curation
- Process flow for Curation
- Some tools for Curation – basic, intermediate, advanced
- Scaling content creation – becoming a nimble publisher using technology and tools
- Tools for photos, video, transmedia showcase
- Repurposing Content

The second part of the slide deck was focused on The Engagement Challenge. My colleague Jyotika would be sharing this soon.

Take a look and do share your thoughts too.

Background – Workshop Agenda

The organising team from Intellcap team had shared with us findings from a dipstick with a set of social entrepreneurs where 3 key challenges emerged post-adoption of social media in their work – content, engagement and scalability. Below is the agenda that we had crafted for the talk basis the same.

From generating awareness, fundraising, building and engaging with the ecosystem, leveraging research and insights and co-creation, social media is playing a key role at different stages of the lifecycle for the social enterprise. The proliferation of ‘voices’ in the social web has also contributed to higher ‘noise’ levels in the recent years. A sharper focus on the ‘purpose’ and emphasis on meaningful and differentiated ‘message’ is what is imperative for every social enterprise or social entrepreneur to be able to leverage the medium to their advantage.

This session will focus on hands-on tactics and tools that can enable a social entrepreneur through the three crucial stages of their journey on social – creating compelling ‘content’, building mutual value and relevance in‘engagement’ and making the first two aspects ‘scalable’ for programme to be sustainable and impactful. It will cover a wide range of formats and third-party tools that can help you showcase your initiatives and message more powerfully. It will include conversations with social enterprises who have successfully leveraged the medium and understand from them specific tactics that have helped them achieve results. 

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Let’s look at what’s happening globally – you will see two-three phenomenon that are driving experiences in governance revolve around participation, transparency, and movements.

The days of the ‘ruling’ and the ‘ruled’ are over. People are now saying, “As my representative, can you help manage my affairs better? I want peace, I want economy, I want jobs.” This is one aspect of the change that you’ve seen. Every dictatorial economy/country has seen revolutions. We have seen people take to the streets in India. We are seeing the vocalisation of concerns and thoughts like never before. Why is all this happening? One reason is of course that people are saying, “I’m not going to stand for this any more.” But more importantly, we are seeing a completely new generation go mainstream, it the young people.

You will see that globally, the transition of the web from predominant work use to predominant use for personal connections. When those personal connections come into play, on one side the digital medium allows you speed of connection, of being able to reach out to people in real time or through asynchronous communication which could be recorded messages and so on and so forth, but on the other side, it is also about open conversations. What do I mean by open conversations?  SMS is not a new medium, SMS has been around for a long time, virals have been happening on SMS for a long time. But even then, one -to-one exchanges on mediums like the mobile were predominantly what I call ‘silent exchanges’. I messaged a friend, it stayed between me and that person. But now when I put out a Facebook or Twitter update, 300 of my friends see it. And then 10 of them share it with 300 of their friends/followers each. And content seems to now become not just more visible, but also viral.  So it’s the visibility that is adding to the virality.

The world over, there is a movement phenomenon that’s coming into play, where people are participating in causes, where people are signing mandates, and pledges, and these are circulating. That’s one side of technology.

The second side of technology is now, linked with people making educated choices. The information economy. Today, because everything is permanent, nothing will go away. So there is a Wikipedia page on every episode in history. History is mostly politics. So if I want to know, why did the country go through a partition, I have a Wikipedia page. I have access to everything that was ever written about the topic. So in the information economy, it is extremely important that my points of view are available. That I am participating in conversations with people who may think alike, or contrary. That I am available for people to consume and engage with. And hence comes the role of channels like Google, Wikipedia and search.

Then, let’s talk about the third aspect of technology. The implicit impact that all of this is having on our opinion. What my friend says about Rahul Gandhi or Narendra Modi might impact my opinion about them. I might not realise it today, but over a period in time – the impact is implicit. The implicit impact of this medium is very powerful. Its actually the implicit impact of this medium that is more powerful than the explicit visible impact, in shaping opinion, in deciding preferences.

And, last but not the least, what this medium does is, say for example how we have seen Narendra Modu use this medium, is almost like a rock-star. Which is a larger than life persona. I can be physically only in one place, but digitally I can be in a thousand, the ability to multiply my presence and engagement and impact, and on one hand allowing me to come down, to reach out to everyone, like an Omar Abdullah does, but at the same time, also be able to come in on a grand scale. Look at the beauty of this medium, it allows me to be both, grand and down-to-earth, in touch with one-on-one interactions. So it is not about a medium, but it is about a society, and a culture , an ecosystem that is being woven together with a thread, the invisible thread of digital technology, that is bringing all these people, the population, their opinions, their wishes, their aspirations, their demands, their thoughts, their voices, all together.

Now if this is the future and politics is what is going to drive this nation, which has always driven the nation, then should the politicians be using this medium, or should they not be using this medium? The answer is very clear.

At this point in the interview I was asked if politicians would use the medium carefully, or if they’d just pump in a lot of money.

I don’t think it is about the money. I think if you see, the space is evolving. There are enough instances, while there are different instances, say for example, the Obama campaign. The Obama campaign is no longer new, it’s two elections. There are enough learnings. There are learnings from Narendra Modi, from Omar Abdullah, from the Anna Hazare episode. There are learnings both good and bad from that. There are learnings from the uprising around the recent unfortunate incident in Delhi.

If you see, there are so many learnings that are available for political parties, and in the elections 2014, this medium is going to play an extremely important role. From ‘entertain and inform’ to direct engagement, to the use of digital technology to create a grand persona, to coming down on planet earth and participating. What we may not see this election, unlike in the US, where fund-raising was a big part of the Obama election, particularly the first one where his success is credited really, to the small funds that were contributed by the voters there, I don’t think we will see that happen in India yet. But I think the stage is set. The governance of tomorrow will be based, rooted in transparency, participation. The digital medium is going to drive it. So it is first of all, not about money. Sure, money is important, but first is about taking a strategic view to understand what’s driving the change. What are the various aspects of this medium? It’s not one; there are four-five different aspects. You have to de-construct the whole thing.

And it’s not a short term play. So if you see, there are probably a handful of people that have understood that it’s not short term. Narendra Modi, very clearly, is among the few that have understood. And he’s really gone about, very carefully, using this medium, participating. So it’s not just about setting up presence. The Prime Minister’s office on the other hand, has not really used this medium well. Narendra Modi has. So I think some of the people have understood that just by creating a presence does not guarantee engagement. And I can’t be doing this once the elections are announced. This has to happen much before. And the beautiful part is, the elections are not going to be over this time, the elections are never going to be over again. The distance between the politicians and the public is now an arm’s length. The answerability is not going to go away.

What do you think?

As it turned out, he was right. I then realised how much difference proper online medical intervention would have made. I would’ve been more relaxed for the surgery.

Social media listening and engagement in the Indian Healthcare Industry is still at a nascent stage. Pharmaceutical and healthcare companies have a tremendous opportunity to capitalise on this medium to listen into online conversations across stakeholders- patients, medical practitioners, Healthcare Influencers and competitors.

Four ways in which the healthcare community uses social media to engage:

1. Patients seeking information and second opinions: Patients, their family members and friends research medical forums and blogs to get more information about ailments, best procedures, best hospitals and even second opinions. Experiences and advice posted by past patients would be a key reference material here.
2. Patients posting daily records: Certain websites allow patients to record their daily health progress and pills intake.
3. Physician-to-patient conversations: Medical practitioners giving online consultation and prescriptions.
4. Recommendations by brand advocates/healthcare influencers: Identification of which brand is popular amongst this set of stakeholders, who have a power to influence opinion online.

Five ways in which the healthcare companies can use social media to listen:

1. Spot trends: Curation, segmentation and analysis of online conversations related to ‘illness’ and ‘wellness’ can help draw meaningful insights, connect dots, spot trends and customer needs, and thus help identify the next product that should be launched by the healthcare companies.
2. Environment mapping: While it is important to monitor what people are saying about your products, it is equally imperative for brands to listen into conversations about competitor brands and their products. Proactive listening about the pharma environment would be incomplete if conversations about the other players in the field were to be ignored.
3. Crisis preparedness: News practically breaks on Twitter and many people are using this medium to communicate with each other even during epidemics – Hurricane Sandy or a flu breakout. Being tuned to these conversations can go a long way in assessing quality of care in a region, leveraging opportunities and planning inventory.
4. Influencer mapping to drive advocacy: Identifying users/organisations that are helping spread positive word of mouth for your brand and products can be very beneficial in the pharmaceutical domain.
5. Identifying detractors: Once identified, the issues of these brand detractors can be taken offline and their queries can be addressed.

A quick conversation audit on Twitter for Dec, 2012 yielded 3,837 mentions of the word ‘Diabetes’.

Some hospitals and medical practitioners share useful tips and information about diabetes. These can be leveraged to endorse/ mention your products:

While on the other hand there are patients seeking help:

These conversations if curated, segmented and analysed can help draw meaningful insights, connect dots, spot trends and thus help identify the next product that should be launched by the healthcare companies.

What other ways can the healthcare companies leverage listening for new product development? Do share your thoughts.

Also, download your copy of the edition here.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-As I write this note, Google has just launched a new initiative egging people on to ‘take action’ and ‘join together to keep the internet free and open’, even as ‘some governments try to increase censorship and regulate the internet’.

A headline in a marketing newsletter I receive every morning, announces, ‘Social media is revitalising the future of TV’. Indeed it is, as the world gets divided between leaners and potatoes, both live-casting their commentary and opinion on TV programming, albeit one watching programmes on call, the other still following a more analog approach to TV viewing (even as the content itself could be in a digital format).

Social media has, on one hand, energised some equations, but on the other, has also reversed many. As a case of the former, consider research and insights. Where months were required to draw inferences from gathered data, today we can achieve the same in real-time, through the river of data, content, and news available to analysts.

To understand the reversal of equations, let’s look at how the powerful today, are the most vulnerable, in terms of impact on reputation. When you don’t have a reputation, all you want is attention, I often say.

Politicians, journalists, cinema stars and large business groups are all under the scanner, and are at the mercy of individual, and, group attacks from stakeholders and pressure groups, but also from trolls. Motivations may vary from bonafide to absolutely malicious.

It is a new world – a world where everyone has the ability to influence opinion; a world where everyone has the ability to influence purchase; a world where distances are down to zero; a world where voice has speed greater than light; a world that pushes away any attempt to regulate it, except through mechanisms of self-regulation; the world that is today is a world shaped by social media and the free-flow of conversations that the phenomenon enables and endorses.

Juxtaposing this fast-paced change on business, marketing, communication, research and content, however, is not seamless. There are no clean-cut transitions in the real world. No start points, no finish lines.

Technology changes far more rapidly than human behaviour, so adoption takes longer; now add to that the complexities of organisations, their businesses, processes, people, cultures, relationships and multiple stakeholders, and it’s not difficult to imagine the complexities of adapting to this change in context of business.

The good news is things are beginning to settle a little – the revolution is well set, it’s time for evolution. This Colloquium is an attempt to gather distilled learning from industry leaders on several aspects of social media in context of business.

“This curious meeting of personalised timelines with a capacity to share, and the intermingling of institutional news with direct tweets and updates from public figures as well as common citizens, is where news begins to resemble the abstract dimensions of quantum physics.” One of the most prolific minds known to me is Narayanan Madhavan, who forever bathes in the river of news and information as part of his vocation as a career journalist. His rich understanding on the subject of ‘Digital Media and the Future of News’ makes it really easy for the reader to understand the context, impact and the direction of what’s ahead.

This is exemplified by Barack Obama’s simple confirmation of his win in the recent US presidential elections, “Four more years.”, which has so far received 817,151 ‘retweets’ and has been ‘favourited’  299,273 times.

In his piece titled ‘The Economics of Attention: Social Media and Businesses’, Sitaram Asur of HP Labs takes a deep dive into brand influence on Twitter through a case-study.

Social commerce, crowd-funding, socially relevant ads are some of the concepts being discussed by Arun Nair in his piece on ‘Contemporary Trends on Social Media’.

Given that Facebook is ubiquitous in every marketer’s social armoury, a piece by Sachin Rao of Facebook, shares a simple four-step process to effectively use the channel successfully.

One of the questions practitioners and buyers (marketers, reputation managers, brand owners) are today confronted with, is how to best measure this medium. While traditional measures may not apply, the obsession with ‘vanity metrics’ such as Likes, Number of Fans etc., leans towards the absurd.

How can we instead measure impact on brand health, marketing success, revenues, and customer service? Avinash Kaushik proposes that we measure these via four distinct metrics: Conversation Rate, Amplification Rate, Applause Rate, and Economic Value.

Once upon a time, data was difficult to get, now data is everywhere, available in real-time. And, even as there are technology tools to help, “real insight will stand up and be counted when we are able to put the human back into the data.”  Dina Mehta and Shubhangi Athalye of Convo share ‘The Future of Insights’.

Even if meaningless had less meaning, I could consider it, I sometimes jokingly comment.

You too will resonate with the piece ‘Defining Purpose and Meaning in Social Media’ by Amita Malhotra, which argues against vanity metrics, engagement for the sake of engagement and establishes the case for why we should all be looking at the social medium, and the value that the stakeholders might find in such an engagement with your brand/ business. “It is only when you know where you want to go, that you can figure out how to get there. And once the destination is in place, getting there is not difficult.”

In August 2011, Mahindra Rise launched the ‘Spark the Rise’ programme to enable positive change in the community at the grassroots level. The goal is to create a participative movement, which relies on the stakeholders to create sustainable initiatives, and properties of significant scale and impact.

The digital medium is playing an important role in helping make Spark the Rise an ‘outside-in’ movement. Akhil Almeida from Mahindra shares a case-study on use of social media. Step-by-step you create a movement.

I would like to sincerely thank my colleague, Kanksha Barman, who has helped immensely in the curation and coordination of this Colloquium.

 ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

As a practitioner, it is sometimes hard to believe how much social media has evolved and transformed in its very character in the past few years. The breed of social media that captured the imagination then has increasingly come to be seen today as ‘utopian’ or ‘idealist’ in its orientation.

One of my favourite memories from our early consulting days is a passionate argument in a client’s office on a ‘small’ point around a Twitter contest. While the client insisted on building a step which required the contest participant to ‘follow’ the brand first, we felt this was not the right thing since the choice to ‘follow’ should remain with the user and would be of real meaning if the user decided to ‘follow’ the brand because of a genuine interest and not because it was obligatory to participate. We truly believed that the way to win customers or ‘followers’ was to create an engagement experience so compelling that they would naturally want to get connected with the brand for similar experiences in future. From the client’s perspective, it was easy to assess the success of the programme from the lens of traditional metrics (‘reach’, growth in database, etc. ) but the concept of building goodwill, longterm loyalty (which, we regarded and continue to regard as the true value of social media) was perhaps a bit vague. Let me clarify that by focusing on quality of the experience, we were not suggesting that numbers were of less importance, we had a strong hashtag strategy in place (on a different note, it’s sometimes hard to explain how a hashtag strategy is much more meaningful and effective than @follow for a medium as Twitter). We believed that an implicit call-for-action for users (building a ‘pull’ through the experience) was of long-term value than an explicit push (‘follow’ us on Twitter).

In a world where ‘follow us and win exciting prizes’ contests by brands are the norm and users are happy to transact personal data and network for a potential material gratification – our concerns then appear to be extraneous today. Or do they?

Vanity Fair – Gathering ‘Fans’

In the recent global economic upheavals, from corporate scandals to entire nations on the brink of bankruptcy, if there is a common thread that is at the root of our current problems, it is the relentless pursuit of shortterm success with scant regard for the long-term growth or outcome. The obsession with ‘number of fans’ and ‘owning’ more fans than the competition has become a key driver for brands online, almost akin to the quarter results paranoia in the real world. A layman may question, why is the desire to gather a large
pool of fans such a bad thing for brands? Isn’t achieving a certain number of fans crucial to even justify ‘investing’ in a medium such as social media instead of say TV? The answer is yes and no. In our social media methodology, we have always emphasized the need to build a ‘strong nucleus’ and achieve ‘critical mass’, and to that end, recommended to our customers the need to spend money that can enable inorganic growth (through ads, apps, contests) especially in the infancy stage of the social media programme. There are however two things to keep in mind:

1) ‘Scaling up’ has always been a ‘means’ for us to achieve a key business outcome and not an ‘end’ in itself. Given the fear and awe that the medium evokes often among senior management, the social media programme is often reduced to a ‘vanity fair’ of sorts
which has no strategic linkage with the business goals. In a hyper-competitive environment, what ensues is a rat race with higher number of fans than X, Y, Z competitors, becoming an ‘end’ in itself.
2) Facebook, which is the preferred destination for businesses to set up presence, has made several changes in the platform in their own journey towards moneti zation that has had an impact for brands and corporates. By their own admission, the average post by a brand only reaches 16 per cent of overall fans. More than the fan count, it is the engagement count such as ‘People Talking About This’ (number of people who engaged with the page in the past 7 days by liking, sharing, commenting, etc.) that is of relevance. Hence, fan count in isolation is the most misleading metric to gauge social media success.

Is This What Engagement Was Supposed To Be?

Now a lot of new media marketers understand that ‘Engagement’ is at the heart of a social media programme. Over the past few years, they have understood that this ‘Engagement’ does not come for free. To make the engagement ‘scalable’ and ‘sustainable’ (not even a social media army can keep a meaningful discussion going 24/7 with a million fans), brands employ a combination of contests, applications, and offers on one hand and on the other build a strong content marketing infrastructure. After all, brands are publishers now and behind every witty tweet or a visually delightful Facebook post, there are a whole host of web designers and copy writers.
Generating a ‘like’ or getting a user to ‘share’ is pursued with a missionary zeal. Sadly, this only helps achieve a semblance of engagement. There are a whole host of ‘strategies’ that help generate such ‘surface’ engagement. One favourite among marketers is using ‘topicality’ to drive conversations. From cricket, movies, current events to special days, a convenient choice to elicit a response/reaction from the audience is to talk about ‘topics’ that make for easy conversation. What is forgotten is the ‘relevance’ of the message. Another favourite term among  marketers on Facebook is ‘news feed optimization’. This means tailoring content to formats which are preferred by Edge Rank – the algorithm which decides where (and if) the brand’s content appears in their fan’s newsfeed. For example, the algorithm gives priority to videos and images over text. Hence, there is a mad scramble to churn out more visual content. ‘Shares’ have higher weightage than ‘comments’ which further have a higher weightage than ‘likes’. The logic is that it is indicative of the ‘extent’ of involvement of the user with the piece of content. Sadly, this often is manipulated to elicit the reaction of choice – more ‘shares’ through sensational content, ‘comments’ through contrived ‘call for action’ updates such as ‘My favourite Sunday morning activity is……. ’ and more ‘likes’ through updates such as “Like” if you’ve listened to the Beatles (the last one is a real example).

The real value of social content was to add ‘meaning’ to what the brand stands for. Unfortunately, today brands risk eroding their core value by facilitating chatter instead of enabling a meaningful dialogue.

Another ‘risk’ with the way social media marketing has evolved recently is that it seems to be regressing back to days of ‘interruption marketing’. On the face, it is permission-based marketing; a brand can ‘directly’ engage with a user only if the latter has given ‘access’ (say by ‘liking’ a page). By granting access, the user also reposes their ‘trust’ in the brand. This ‘trust’ gets belied when the brand resorts to the same old interruptive techniques – when the focus shifts from interests of the brand’s community to the brand’s own self-interests. In the long-term, this can lead to users tuning-out completely and the entire medium getting discredited as a ‘spam engine’.

Social media is dead. Long live social media.

My colleague, Rajesh, often uses this line to speak of the extinction of the breed of social media that existed during its advent. In a recent blog post, “An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg”, he speaks about one of the aspects of this change:

“The promise of ‘intimate conversa-tions’ has somewhere taken a back-seat, with the focus on ‘scale’ by most marketers, and perhaps, by channels like Facebook. While scale is critical for most large brands, the danger is that the social medium, and Facebook, run the risk of becoming like mass-media – overwhelming amount of marketing messages in which some content is sandwiched- that the audience were running away from. ‘Fans’ have ended up being a ‘mass’ rather than an individual or a group of ‘individuals’ that a brand could understand, and connect with deeply.”

Co-creation was heralded as one of the virtues of the new age marketing enabled by social media. However, co-creation of thoughts, concepts, ideas, and products can happen when the engagement with the community is deep and not superficial, when brands really ‘know’ their fans and not merely ‘reach’ them. Increasingly, the focus for marketers has shifted from community ‘building’ to community ‘management’. A true community, by definition, is participatory and an evolved community is driven by users than really ‘managed’. However, in reality, communities seeded by brands tend to continue to be ‘driven’ by brands themselves, where they act as ‘gatekeepers’ instead of facilitators.

There is a need to re-look at the community, not as an entity that needs to be ‘managed’, but as one that lives shared values and can play an important role in problem solving. I also feel that brands need to take their role as ‘publishers’ on social media with a pinch of salt. The ‘need for speed’ leaves little scope for checks and balances on the accuracy or introspection of ‘value’ of the message being shared. The anxiety to remain ‘top of mind’, ‘in consideration set’, ‘always engaged’ means frequency takes precedence over the ‘message’. This inflation of chatter and recession of message is of little value in the long term. It only leads to bringing the discourse down to suit the ‘lowest common denominator’.

Finally, there is an urgent need to re-look at how social media efforts of businesses are measured. Brands need to look beyond output generated (no. of ‘fans’, ‘engaged fans’) to more meaningful measures at an outcome level. There is a need to draw a co-correlation with impact on brand health, sales, and organizational efficiency among others.

Purpose and Meaning

It is absolutely imperative that brands and organizations first define their purpose for existing on social media, linked with their business objectives and goals. Who does the brand want to engage with? What does the brand hope to achieve from its social media efforts? How will this intent come alive on social media channels? Which initiatives will help attain these goals? These are questions that need to have answers in place.

The next step is to define what the value is, that the stakeholders will find in initiatives and in engaging with the brand. Any interaction between the brand and its stakeholders must be of value of the stakeholders. This is how brands can remain relevant, and go on to become brands for the future.

It is only when you know where you want to go, that you can figure out how to get there. And once the destination is in place, getting there is not difficult.

6. Background

Photographs can make beautiful backgrounds but have to be chosen carefully. Great photographs almost always ensure high engagement, especially the ones which feature people. Try and choose photos which are not too busy where the text has to come, otherwise your text can get lost. Use a colour which stands out against the photo, but also goes well with it, or you might want to put your text in a coloured / translucent box. You might have to use a bolder font, make it larger or use drop shadow. If you are using a plain background, an overlay of paper texture or any other simple texture can add a great deal of visual interest.

Look at the visuals below used by DONE by NONE and Coca-Cola. DONE by NONE has used text over an illustration in a box to convey the message clearly. Coca-Cola has used a photograph where the picture doesn’t interfere with the text. This makes sure that the viewer pays equal attention to the picture as well as the written message. The white text stands out against the dark background.

7. Technical Glitches

Quite often while we save an image it gets pixellated, even though it appears fine while we work on it. Pixellated pictures can be annoying to look at and can seriously tarnish the reputation of the brand. There are some tricks to prevent that from happening. Always check that the resolution of your artwork is at least 72 dpi. While designing for the screen, it is important that you change the view settings to pixel preview so that it shows you exactly how it’s going to appear on the screen at 100% zoom. When you do this, you can also make sure that your text remains legible at that size. Sometimes while working with photographs we tend to blow up low quality images to a considerable amount, making it pixellated. Always ensure that the photograph you’re using is of high quality and you don’t have to blow it up more than 200%. Even then if it pixellates, you can repair it by using a blur filter set to 2-3 pixels, to soften the sharp pixels. Then use a sharpening filter, but using it excessively can make your image look harsh. Try playing around with other artistic filters, but not excessively. Save your image as a PNG instead of a JPEG because it employs lossless data compression.

The following images have been resized using JPEG and PNG compression. Can you guess which is which?

At the end of the day, the user is the best judge, and engagement on the image is the best way to measure its effectiveness. So it is important to do a little bit of research to figure out what clicks with your target audience. Don’t lose heart if you’re not too well-versed with the softwares. It will come to you with practice. Your imagination is a much more valuable tool than Photoshop. Feel free to add to this list of guidelines. Happy designing!

3. Spacing

Negative spaces are as important in a template as anything else. Very often people tend to fill these spaces with more words, or clip arts, because, hey I’ve got all this space and it’s going to waste! Big mistake. It is very important to maintain legibility and harmony in your templates by giving them a healthy amount of breathing space. Make sure that the different elements of your visual do not interfere with each other. The amount of space should preferably be in the following order: bottom margin > top, right and left margin> paragraph break > line space > word space > letter space. However, this is a very traditional and safe rule that seasoned graphic designers might not stick to. But remember, it is important to know and master the rules before you are qualified enough to break them.

Let’s look at these two templates used by Westland Books and General Electric. They have used their external and internal spaces very differently. Which one do you think has balanced them better?

4. Type Selection

This can be tricky for people who are not well acquainted with typefaces. First, there are legal issues. Since pirated typefaces are used freely in our country, it is very important to check online whether you have the permission to use them, because the web does not have any national boundaries, and your company can be sued by type foundries for using pirated typefaces. Also, free typefaces can often be hideous to look at. Font Squirrel comes to our rescue with free to use quality typefaces which are categorised by style. Typefaces, when used wisely, can add great aesthetic value to your template. To be on the safer side, choose from the sans serif collection before you start experimenting. Don’t use too many typefaces. Don’t use more than 2, in fact, the safer option would be to use different weights of the same typeface.

Check out how Artic Vodka India has used type. Using light weights of a typeface can add elegance. Random House India has used a beautiful art deco typeface (below right) and played around with the typography.

5. Colour

Stick to a colour scheme of 2 to 3 colours, because more colours can be difficult to handle. The RGB colour model makes it possible to use a wide variety of colours but you can considerably streamline your choices according to the kind of audience that you’re trying to target. Your brand must also have a colour scheme. Use brights and complementaries (but do not use blinding, jarring combinations) for a youthful look and feel. Add a touch of grey for sophistication. I’m a great fan of grey because it can be used with almost any other colour. Instead of keeping the background white, use another light colour, because it is important for your template to stand out against the (usually) white background. Instead of using black for text, try using a deep blue, or red, or green, grey etc. Keep the use of brown to a minimum, because very few people know how to use that colour without making it look ‘muddy’. Color Scheme Designer  is a great web based tool to try different colour schemes and see how they look when used in combination with each other. Kuler, a community where users share colours schemes, can come in handy. I will talk more about colour schemes in my subsequent posts

Now that you’ve learnt a decent number of graphic design basics, start noticing the graphic design that is all around you. Try and dissect it based on the points that we’ve discussed above. Do post your observations below