All Eyes On: Facebook, Productivity and Branding
Published by Vicky
This week we’re talking about Facebook, productivity, a change of branding for Slack, and personal brands for all of us.
Facebook makes more changes
Facebook is always researching and updating to try and create the best experience for the user, and of course to stay on top as the biggest social media platform. Last week they announced that they will begin testing a feature to allow users to share events on their Story.
This week Facebook has launched Community Actions, a facility to create petitions within the newsfeed. They have begun rolling this out in the US, and we’re sure it won’t be long until the feature hops across the pond to the UK!
Be more productive by putting a value on your time!
In a recent team meeting we discussed time management and being more productive. People often think that working remotely means there’s more time and opportunity for slacking off and time wasting, but actually we’ve found the opposite to be true. Our time is accounted for, from the moment we begin work to the moment we finish; no congregating around the water cooler to complain about the boss (actually we quite like him but don’t tell him that!); no shuffling pieces of paper, trying to look busy or sneakily scrolling through Facebook when nobody’s looking! In fact, we’ve often found that we’ve barely looked at our social media through the day, and pick up our phones in the evening to find hundreds of notifications. Like so many things in life, being productive is about priorities and this article by Anthony Moore on Medium was interesting to us because it suggested we all put a monetary figure on our time. If your time was worth $1,000 per hour, would you really spend all that time on social media? Or would you get on and achieve something with your day? (Disclaimer: we still love social media; we just make sure we do the $1,000-per-hour things first!)
Slack changes its logo
Being a largely remote company, we use Slack for everything from in-depth project planning to chat about weekend plans. It’s a tab we all have open on our desktops, all day – so we all noticed last week, when Slack changed their logo! Reactions were mixed, with many people responding quite negatively to the change. Fast Company delved deep into the rebranding process with an interview with Michael Bierut of Pentagram, the design studion that worked on the project. Whether you love or loathe the new logo, this is an interesting example of how the original logo was perhaps not fit for purpose; the beloved plaid hashtag had eleven colours, meaning it would have been a nightmare in terms of consistency especially when working with partner sites etc. As well as this they would have needed numerous different versions of the logo to fulfil different requirements. This is something that can serve as a lesson to us all; often when we’re first setting up a brand or business we choose a logo and colour scheme based on what looks nice or what fits in with some other aspect of the business – but it’s important to also consider how the branding will fare in years to come: how easy it will be to adapt, or to regulate if being used by partners and suchlike.
Defining your personal brand
Do you have a personal brand? These days with social media we all have an online presence; you don’t need to be an influencer or a blogger to have your own personal brand; in fact, it could be argued that we all have a personal brand, whether we have defined it ourselves or not – in which case, better to define your personal brand than to have labels placed upon you from elsewhere! We enjoyed a great article from Sarah Aboulhosn on Medium about personal branding, and the potential for being pigeonholed, shifting focus and being transparent. How authentic are you on your social media?
