One of the drawbacks of working on your own is that you don’t have the same access to colleagues to bounce ideas off. And, work that isn’t peer-reviewed is often not as strong as it could be.

For example, over the last few weeks I’ve been learning about iOS development and I built a prototype of a very simple app (just to see if I could). The app basically displays random, and dirty, pickup lines that guys could use in bars. I spent a fair amount of time designing a nice pink icon with hearts all over it, and a beautifully pink gradient background and used a script font to display the text. When I was finished I thought, “Wow, that looks pretty good.”

I showed it to my wife and she said, “Yes, honey that looks good!”

I showed it to my friend and he said, “Looks good buddy.”

I was feeling pretty confident and good about myself. I had conquered building an app (albeit a very simple one) and people thought it looked good. Gold star for me.

Then, I sent a test version to a colleague.

“What do you think?” I probed.

*pause*

“Well, it looks kind of girly. And, it seems the target market is men who would use cheesy pickup lines.” my colleague replied.

In my head I thought,  for just a split second I thought, “Did he just call my baby ugly?”

But then I realized that he was right. The way the app looked was totally targeted at the wrong folks. How did I not see this? Why was I so stupid? Oh the horror.

The point of my story is that great work (and great marketing) doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You need to test and get real feedback from your customers and colleagues.

Sometimes it can be as simple as just talking to your customers. Other times you might want a well-designed survey tool.

But for sure, you need to give people a real chance to tell you your ‘baby is ugly’.

Hint: A Facebook page could be used just as much for customer feedback as it could be for marketing.

One of the things that bugs me is the obligatory line of social media icons on offline promotions. You see this everywhere. Billboards, signs, advertisements etc plastered with icons as if somehow putting these logos on your materials equates to having a well thought out social media strategy (it doesn’t…and it’s kind of silly).

What bugs me even more is when the icons are accompanied by a tagline ‘Find us on Facebook!!!!’.

In my mind I’m screaming, “I’d love to find you on Facebook…but I don’t know how!!!! (that’s right I triple exclamation marked that sentence in my head)”

Facebook’s search generally sucks. I am almost never able to find the page I’m looking for…and if I do it’s often after two or three variant searches. But what’s most annoying is the fact that it’s EASY (that’s right I’m shouting) to provide full URLs to your profiles and not doing so is just lazy.

If it’s in a mobile setting where you can easily take a photo and the audience your targeting is ‘tech savvy’ you could embed the URL in a QR code for easy access. One for each profile please.

For everybody else for the love of Twitter please provide full URLS.

P.S. In case you are interested you can ‘Find me on Facebook’.

Four years ago, when I’d stand up in front of a crowd, I felt it was my mission to make everybody in the room realize the power of social media. I’d talk about how you wouldn’t be in business if you didn’t start thinking socially. I’d ramble stat after stat on social media growth. I’d dig my heals in and get ready for a good fight. I felt it was my destiny to make everybody who didn’t believe, ‘believe’ (waving hands like a preacher).

Today I’ve pretty much given upon on ‘selling social media’ to the non-believers.

It’s not that I think social media isn’t still important. In fact, just the opposite – I think it’s more important than ever. But, I now believe that the people who were once classified as skeptics are now viewed as laggards. Their credibility has completed eroded.

I always run into one or two in every crowd. They proclaim, “I just don’t get it. This is completely useless. Why would anybody use Twitter? This can’t possibly be used for business.”

I’m tempted to hold their face and shout, “Look. Look. See what’s happening around you? People are tweeting, posting and commenting so much you can almost hear the hum from the internet. And it’s not all just about what people had for lunch. Businesses are selling products, consultants are building networks, and the people of the world are using these tools to make their world a better place.”

But then I realize that they’ve likely heard this message a thousand times before. Probably from people who are way smarter than me.

So I calm down and remind myself, eventually they’ll come around or they won’t.

The world they are operating in is a different one from that they are living in…