Big news out of InstaGram headquarters: InstaGram, the beloved photo-filtering app for iPhone and Android that was acquired by Facebook earlier in 2012, recently announced a change to its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

If you haven’t heard, here’s the scoop, straight from the horse’s mouth. (By the way, I filtered the photo in this post using InstaGram for iPhone.)

I’m an avid InstaGram user.

I IG something in my life — or someone, or some plate of food, or some landscape — almost every day, often multiple times a day. (Yes, I know that sounds a little ridiculous to all you non-IG users. But I’m not quite this bad.)

I dig InstaGram. A lot.

I follow brands there and I follow people there.

I experience a deeper sense of community — of the type people commonly say they find on Facebook — than I’ve found on any other social media platform.

I like getting tiny, stillshot glimpses into the lives of people I know and care about. I like that the interface is relatively text-light. I like that saying I’m with you is as easy as clicking the ♥ button. (Somehow it feels entirely more intimate than clicking Like on Facebook.)

And yet, my InstaGram account is private and, for the foreseeable future, will remain private.

I don’t IG for business, as a web traffic generating tool. (No judgment on those who do.) I don’t link to my InstaGram account from my social media panel on my site. My account is private, which means people have to send me a Follow request to view any of my photos. And I deny almost all of the Follow requests I get. Unless you and I have had a voice conversation (or two), or we go way back on social media through many, many warm interactions, I probably won’t be clicking Accept.

Why? Because I use InstaGram like a photo diary — one that I care to share only with people I already know in some way.

I snap and filter moments in my life that aren’t business-related. They’re personal. And, to some degree, private. (And yes, — snicker — subject to InstaGram’s Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.)

There are select photos from my InstaGram account that I do share publicly, via Twitter or my business Facebook page. The others? Well — me stirring chocolate batter over a double boiler for no-bake cookies? Is that really all that interesting to someone who was drawn to my brand to learn about brand strategy, copywriting, and voice development? Yep, I hear you — we want to know the person behind the brand. Of course we do! In — I would argue — a composed way. And InstaGram — that’s one little space where I let myself go off-composition.

My interest in InstaGram as a user is that I can maintain the private space there that feels good to me.

And according to InstaGram’s latest articulation of its new terms, this is exactly what I can keep on doing. This is from the article I linked to at the top of the page:

“Privacy Settings Nothing has changed about the control you have over who can see your photos. If you set your photos to private, Instagram only shares your photos with the people you’ve approved to follow you. We hope that this simple control makes it easy for everyone to decide what level of privacy makes sense.”

Most of the hubbub I’ve heard in the Twitterverse and blogosphere is around the misconception — at least for now it’s a misconception — that InstaGram has plans to sell our photos for ad spots.

Here’s this, from the same article I linked to above, from co-founder Kevin Systrom:

Advertising on Instagram From the start, Instagram was created to become a business. Advertising is one of many ways that Instagram can become a self-sustaining business, but not the only one. Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear. . . .

Ownership Rights Instagram users own their content and Instagram does not claim any ownership rights over your photos. Nothing about this has changed. We respect that there are creative artists and hobbyists alike that pour their heart into creating beautiful photos, and we respect that your photos are your photos. Period.

So for now, I’m staying put on InstaGram, whose terms really aren’t all that different from its parent company Facebook’s, whose ever-changing Privacy Policy and Terms of Use I find obnoxious, though not aggregious.

After all, whether they yet have sustainable business models or not, these two software platforms don’t exist to foster community — although that’s what they end up doing.

They exist to seek profitability, and they’ll iterate until they figure out what that looks like, and until they find a business model that meets their users’ needs at a core level, so much so that enough of us will gladly “pay” (in some way) to keep interacting with the brand as often as we want to. I don’t fault them. Isn’t that what microbusinesses like yours and mine are doing every day?

For now, I’ll gladly stick with the IG company I keep.

In the comments, I’d love to know:

InstaGram: you jumping ship? Why or why not?

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We ask 5 smart voices for their 100-word take on 1 provocative brand challenge. Today’s question is . . .

What did you learn from your biggest branding misstep?

Jessika Hepburn

“In my almost ten years of entrepreneurship I’ve built, and worn, a number of brands and identities. Most of them weren’t all that awesome and some of them were downright terrible! Looking through my early branding attempts is like tripping through old school year books — you cringe at the hair but are also attracted by how young and recklessly stupid you were. I was at a Veda Hille concert years ago where she chatted with the audience about her first demo tape. She asked us, and this stuck with me, ‘How could you let me be so young in public?’ My whole business evolution has been one long process of being young in public. I am not formally trained, I have no bits of paper certifying I know what I am doing, everything I know I learned the hard way . . . by messing it up. I can say one thing for sure about my branding (and life) adventures: I’ve turned a gazillion wrong corners but every single one takes me in the right direction.”

Jessika Hepburn is the editor and creative force behind Oh My! Handmade, a community where the diverse creative entrepreneurs of the world connect to build the work of their dreams, learn how put food in the fridge, and  find a big hug when things don’t go as planned (and they never go as planned).

 

Dave Ursillo

“My biggest branding misstep was thinking of my brand as something different than who I am as a human being. That includes my name, face, personality, and sharing my flaws and missteps just as much as my successes and victories. Your brand is as simple as being as ‘most you’ as you possibly can be, and proudly owning what you believe and why you do what you do. To many, that’s more terrifying than tossing impersonal copy around a $50 logo. What I tell every writer, artist, creative, blogger, or budding entrepreneur is that your face is your logo, so show it; your story is your mission statement, so tell it; your life is your business, so live it.”

Dave Ursillo is a writer and entrepreneur who teaches creative self-activators how to live and love the journey while forging new freedom in their lives through their beloved crafts. Join his writers’ group at LiteratiWriters.com.

Brit Hanson

“I washed the poetry
out of my brand.

I replaced
the collections
with code;
my pencils
with pens;
Richard Wright
with his rigid Granny.

No, I’m not
being coy.

I lost my way
the moment I smeared,
crinkled and tossed
those lyrics and lines,
that intuitive atlas,
down the laundry shoot
with my sweaty tees.

Hurry to the basement
there’s still time.

You cannot —
must not —
wash out
the thing
that is
your poetry.”

Brit is a poet and digital storyteller who offers story-based social media services at BritHanson.com.

Jenn Gibson

“I didn’t have a clear vision of aesthetic or identity for Roots of She in the beginning; I had this idea for a project, something I needed to birth, and I leapt and dove right in, pulling in pieces of previous projects and online journals. It wasn’t a good fit, but it was enough so I could begin, so I went with it. Within three months, I had revamped so many core items: banner, social media buttons, color scheme — and heck, while I was changing things, I moved from Blogger to WordPress. The end result of that evolution was a clean, simplistic site with an abundance of white space and sleeker lines.

“The huge lesson in it all was to slow down: No, things don’t have to be ‘perfect’ to launch, but not rushing the pre-launch, getting clear on the basics — from blogging platform to color palette to posting schedule — is so important and saves so much time and energy in the end.”

Jenn Gibson is a life coach and the creator of Roots of She, a collection of true stories and tender wisdom for women, by women.

 

Tamarisk Saunders-Davies

“There’s no big, face-palm moment but I understand the word ‘brand’ to mean the promise of an experience, so branding missteps happen in my business any time I am not delivering on the type of experience I am promising. That might be a blog post I think is going to have everyone piling into the comments and sharing everywhere — and it has zero effect. It might be the somatic sensation that Twitter feels weird for me right now. Usually, things like that mean the experience that people seek when they hang out with me online isn’t coming through for them.“

Tamarisk is a Connection Catalyst (AKA life coach) who helps courageous women take their lives from average to awesome.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What’s been your biggest branding misstep and what did you learn from it? And — out of curiosity — looking back, were there any signs you should’ve seen that would’ve told you were in the midst of a misstep?

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I built my first business on the power of cool.

It was a brick and mortar retail store called THE BLISSFUL in my Ohio hometown. (These are its blog archives.) 2000 square feet of funky, French-inspired lifestyle goods — everything from organic cotton t-shirts to upholstered chaise lounges to a stone bust imported from Egypt to Scandinavian stationery. Four years of harder work than I’ve ever done in my life — oftentimes back-breaking, dispiriting, pride-swallowing work — alongside my (cool) mom (that’s her at left, across from me at an Asian fusion restaurant), who was my unofficial business partner and the shop’s visual stylist.

It was a cool store.

We sold cool stuff that we merchandised in a way that made it look even more cool; other shop owners would drive in from states away to surreptitiously photograph the shop and get ideas for their own displays. Oh, she just  . . . we could hear them whispering one to the other as they ambled from display to display, narrating aloud the elements that made up our vision.

We won an independent retail industry award and got cool perks because of it, like comped hotel rooms when we traveled to market. I was invited to serve on the Advisory Board of a retail trade magazine.

Our customers mythologized us as shopkeepers. “My mother knows the owner,” one man who’d called the shop told me . . . about me. “The owner travels back and forth to France all the time.” I’d never been, and had never claimed to have been, to France.

A writer and stylist for a high-profile shelter magazine called me to ask if she could do a story and a photographic feature on my home (assuming it was as cool as my shop was). At the time, I was living with my parents and sleeping in my childhood bedroom.

I got used to being a merchant of cool*.

(Hat tip here to the fabulous documentary of the same name — whose topic is not exactly what I’m talking about in this post.)

When I closed my shop and started freelancing full-time, I assumed that my new Brand Proposition could easily be the same as the one from my retail business: buy from me because my brand, my POV, and my “eye” are cool, and this is the coolest approach to home decor/gifts/personal accessories copywriting/branding and marketing consulting you can get.

I intentionally shaped my freelance brand as aspirational in flavor, because aspirational lifestyle retail — over the top displays that bore little to no resemblance to how people would actually use these objects in their own homes, but that was what was cool and wow-worthy about it — was what I knew and did well.

I tried marketing my freelance business on the power of cool for a year or so.

I trusted that the Right People would be attracted to my brand, because, well, they’d just “get it” or they wouldn’t. I would’ve bet the farm that just “being myself in my brand’ was the best way to shape it. I ended up working with all different sorts of clients that year. Some of them were Right Enough for my phase in business, some of them — weren’t.

I wrote sales page copy for myself that was way too meta. My $127 audio course converted at about 1% of my list size. I cycled through highs and lows, both with income and in entrepreneurial self-esteem.

Then one day, a mentor gave me a b*tch slap of a newsflash:

“You know why your sales pages aren’t converting? It’s because you’re trying to market your brand on the power of your personality. Like, hey, look how cool I am, don’t you want to spend time with me and my brand because we’re so cool? You need to talk benefits. Results. What they get. People would LOVE to throw money at you if you’d just tell them what they’re f*cking getting!”

A-ha!

People aren’t really drawn to our brands by us, because of us. It’s not our cool factor, our witty one-liners in audio interviews, or even our jaw-dropping tagline that calls them in.

People are drawn to our brands by what they need from us to be more of themselves or to have the life they’re trying to create.

In order for them to realize we’re offering what they need from us, they need to believe that:

1. we see them,
2. we get what’s challenging for them, and
3. we have a thoughtful solution.

Cool alone isn’t cutting it.

I’m not anti-cool by any means. I love cool. I refuse to assign any one tantamount definition of cool to cool.

Cool is subjective. Cool has 32 flavors and then some. Cool looks, sounds, acts, thinks, and feels differently on each of us — and on each of our brands.

As for me, I stepped down from the platform I was intent on riding around on (to protect myself and my energy as an introvert), and I got wise to how to really connect with my Right People. And it wasn’t — shockingly, to me! — about modeling ‘cool.’

Neither was it, for me, about becoming hyper-accessible or more available for Skype chats with everyone who wants to say hello, or endless emailing back and forth with people who love to discuss ideas but have no immediate intention of ever becoming clients.

For me, it was about (and still is about) designing a business that addresses my ideal clients’ true needs, core desires, and persistent questions. It’s not about me living out my own journey through the offers I create. It’s about composing a brand story that speaks to my Right People’s identity at many levels.

It’s about approaching branding, copywriting, and marketing with empathy, taking the focus off of me and how I want to feel and looking at life and the problems my business solves through my ideal clients’ eyes.

My brand today is a reflection of my style and aesthetic preferences, sure, but you better believe I conceptualized it to please my Right People first. I can do that easily now, because I know who they are.

We hear this advice all the time — focus on your readers’ needs, step into their shoes — but have you really done it yet? (Hint: If you had, you’d already know exactly what your Ideal Client wants to buy from you.)

The risk of self-centric branding and marketing — marketing your business on the power of your own personality, the juice from your own vein of cool, or on the stoked embers of how you want to feel — is building a business that misses out on serving Right People because you’re expecting them to look just like you.

Conflating yourself and your Ideal Clients is the quickest way to build an ego-centric business.

Assuming that you must design your business and your brand to serve a past version of yourself — I can’t think of a more limiting belief for a business owner.

When you conflate your Ideal Client and yourself, you fail to see and understand who they are because you’re so caught up in Doing You through your business. You assume their needs, challenges, questions, stumbling blocks, and pain points are the very ones you yourself have struggled with — or are still struggling with.

In some cases, this is absolutely true.

And in other cases, it’s absolutely untrue.

Have you considered that maybe your Right Person doesn’t have all that much in common with you psychologically or emotionally, and may be drawn to work with you for that very reason?

Are you sure you can only be satisfied in your business if you’re serving people a lot like you?

Ego-centric businesses, while they might attract big headlines, don’t necessarily have big bottom lines.

It’s time for a new paradigm in branding.

Here at The Voice Bureau, we begin with each client’s Voice Values, three to five core features of your naturally powerful voice that you already rely on when you’re connecting with readers, clients, and colleagues.

Think of your Voice Values as the current of Empathy that flows through your brand. Your Right People are drawn to you because of your Voice Values. So whether we’re rewriting your About page, helping you finesse a sales page for your new online program, or putting together a visual creative brief you can hand off to a web designer — we start by looking at how you’re already primed to connect with your ideal clients. (No navel-gazing or psychoanalysis on your part necessary.)

Discover Your Voice Values today, right here, for free. Enter your best email address below and click Go.

In the comments, would you share with us:

Where have you caught yourself conflating your own journey with your Ideal Clients’ journey? Or what assumptions have you made about your Right People that you’re ready to let go of so you can really serve them? I’ll share my story if you’ll share yours.

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