Why You Can't Afford to Ignore Your Audience
Published by Ryan Healy on March 19th, 2009 in Marketing | 5 CommentsBrazen is officially one-year-old this month. We actually launched the site on March 1, 2008, so I'm a couple of weeks late with this announcement, but better late than never.
If you were with us the first day we launched you'll remember the photo on the front page was of a woman in a tank-top shirt showing her stomach and flashing a handful of $100 bills for everyone to see.
It was obnoxious, a little risqué, and quite frankly, a poor representation of our brand. We really figured this out about a month after we launched. Ryan Paugh and I were driving down the road in Madison and we saw a billboard. As we crept closer, we couldn't believe our eyes, the woman from the homepage was on the billboard, staring us in the face, flashing $100 bills and telling us to go to Ho-Chunk casino!
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Brazen Careerist and Ho-Chunk casino should not be using the same stock photos. And in this case, Ho-Chunk got it right. We made a branding mistake. But that's cool; we've made a ton of mistakes in the past 18 months. Luckily, we've learned from every mistake we've made, and I'd like to think we're a better company, and better community because of it.
Now we're taking a step back and trying to figure out what to do next at Brazen. We have a million ideas. In fact, our tiny development team could probably spend the next two years building the ideas we've already thrown around. But we want to make sure that the next thing we do really benefits the community.
So we're asking for feedback from Brazen Careerist members, readers or potential members who are just waiting for us to do something really cool before they join. If there was one feature or addition that you would like to see on Brazen Careerist, what would it be? Feel free to leave a suggestion below, or join the conversation on the official Team Brazen blog where I lay out a couple of our ideas.
The biggest lesson we've learned at Brazen and a lesson that can be applied to every company is that the audience is ALWAYS right. The people you are trying to reach ultimately decide what is appropriate for your brand and what isn't.
For example, if you're a recruiter trying to fill an entry level position, it doesn't matter how cool you think your company is, or how lucky you think someone would be if they get the job that you are trying to fill, you really have no idea what recruits will think until you ask.
In this case, I would ask your newest employees. Find out what attracted them to the company and what things you should highlight when you're branding your company as a great place to work. Then try a few things out and determine which are the most successful. After a few interviews, you can even ask the recruits directly what attracted them to the company.
Even if you don't get the response you're looking for, when you ask your audience exactly what they want and you listen to them, you won't have to guess about what may work and what may not.
A surefire way to be successful is to have an army of people who find your company, product or service useful AND truly believe in what you are doing. But for people to care about what you're doing, you first have to care about what they want.
From here on out, we'll be asking for as much input as possible from our community before starting a new project. I would highly recommend your company do the same.
(And don't forget to leave us some feedback here or on the Brazen blog!)
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Leave your thoughts here. (5 responses)
This article´s comments All Employee Evolution commentsAnna
Mar 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pmHow did it take you 1 month to figure out that that image was crap? We (your audience) told you on the very first day BC launched. Just look back at PT's blog posts around that time for the comments.
Ryan Healy
Mar 19th, 2009 at 4:28 pmHey Anna, we definitely read everything on PT's blog, and we knew that it wasn't appropriate. But the billboard really reaffirmed that it was way off!
Bri
Mar 23rd, 2009 at 10:17 amI've been reading Penelope's posts for quite a while and subscribed to Employee Evolution, too. But what I can't for the life of me figure out is how does Brazen Careerist, as a company, plan to make any money at all? I understand you're a new company and you've struggled with funding, but really – what about that site is going to make you money? And your mission statement is about as clear as mud, which is why I'm still so baffled about the potential for profit here.
Ryan Stephens
Mar 26th, 2009 at 6:38 amHey man. Tried this on the official Brazen Blog, but couldn't get it to post so here it is here.
Here are just a couple off the top of my head:
1.) I think the Brazen Blog should immediately be a little more prominent on the home page. When I think about the talented writers that work for Brazen I think blog.brazencareerist is a great place to not only showcase your members the way Paugh is doing, but also keep us up to date with what's going on with the company.
The company excels at being transparent so highlight that on the blog, and then make the blog a little more prominent. The argument is that you want to showcase the community members, and I agree, but keeping the community members in the loop is also important. Also, pick out one to three posts a week and highlight them with a short summary as a weekly wrap or something. Not necessarily what gets the most comments. I can write "Marriage is stupid, I'll never do it," and make that list, but something that really makes you think. Or the things you missed and shouldn't have … something like that.
2.) I really like the new home page, I think it's very solid, but I do agree that we all need to be brainstorming ideas that can bring the community together. Not just the 20-something bloggers, but also the corporate bloggers, and the Brazen staff. The forum was unsuccessful in the past, but maybe there's a solution to that somewhere (I don't currently have it, but I do envision this well-oiled machine with corporate bloggers, and brazen bloggers having these great, intense debates about stuff that matters.)
These are just two that immediately jumped out at me. I'm open to having a conversation with any of you about anything moving forward. I'm proud to be apart of this community, and I see looking outward just what it's capable of.
R
Brad
Mar 26th, 2009 at 9:55 am@Bri I'd advise you never to write something like that unless you're completely 100% positive you're correct and even then you should reconsider your tone in a public forum.
As for money and revenue, Jobs and Recruiting are billion dollar industries and young talent and finding ways to attract it are some of the hottest segments (yes, even in the current economic environment)
I could go on for a while about ways to monetize brazencareerist but the most obvious would be to create the correct type of platform for companies to find talent… a quick revamp of the job board would probably turn the revenue stream on for them pretty quickly, nail what a job site should look for millennials and they secure a pretty big piece of the pie.
But by all means worry about the mission statement because thats obviously the most important thing about the site. One could have said that "don't be evil" was a pretty terrible mission statement and that worked out pretty well for a little company I know. Point is, focus on stuff of consequence.