Cocktail Hour: March 30, 2012

I didn’t have a theme in mind when writing this week’s post, but it inadvertently became all about humanizing your brand. With three of the five articles dealing with personality in some way, I’ll let you be the judge of how important I think this element is.

Survey Says Marketers See Social Media as an Experiment (Marketing Pilgrim): In a survey conducted by Pivot, 49% of respondents said they still see social media as experimental. Reasons for this included budget concerns and uncertainty about results. You can find the whole survey linked from the article, but do you agree? Is social media just a grand experiment? Isn’t that what they said about the television?

Redesigning with Personality (Smashing Magazine): At some point or another, we’re focusing on either developing or retooling our digital presence. Yes, all official and relevant information is important, but that can get incredibly boring fast. We aren’t the Jetsons, and we don’t have robot employees. People work at your company. Show it!

Why the Best Product Doesn’t Always Win (Inc. Magazine): Your newest product just launched. Congratulations! I’m sure it’s totally awesome. However, what’s coming next from your competitors? They’re studying your efforts and tweaking their second wave of products to fill in any gaps you may have missed. Did you hit everything the customer wanted? This is an important lesson to remember in ultimate success or failure.

Five (Serious) Tips for Using Humor to Connect, Engage, and Influence (Social Media Explorer): Going along with showing your personality, it’s totally okay to be funny. Being funny also requires being smart: Don’t target the wrong people, don’t be super obscure and don’t go so far that you lose all credibility. Never underestimate the power of a smile.

Can Too Much SEO Be a Bad Thing? (Entrepreneur): This article runs through the dangers of becoming too optimized and its potential repercussions. Yes, it’s important to be optimized. No, it’s not a good idea to appear completely automated. Please, everyone. No digital lobotomies.

And as a bonus, check out AdWeek’s look at the 36 Most Viral Apple Ads Ever. It’s important to look back to see where you’re headed, but I swear if I see that “Call me Rock God” Siri commercial one more time, I will punch through my TV.

What have you been reading this week?