Michael Leis

This past week I had the pleasure of being invited by Dennis Schleicher to visit Sears and host a discussion on visual and narrative techniques found in dramatic storytelling, and how they apply to system organization, social media and user experience.

Moving into its third or fourth year as a Web design / marketing mantra, it seems the people marching to the drumbeat of “Death to Microsites,” has had a confluence with Facebook surpassing 300 milion registered users. To a chorus of rousing applause, more and more large brands are discontinuing the practice of creating microsites [...]

It’s fairly prevalent now to find larger brands ready to jump headlong into a sweeping social media strategy.  “We get it!” or “We know our customers are there!” It feels a lot like when athletes in interviews (or reality TV contestants) say things like, “We gotta step it up.” or “Take it to the next [...]

Looking at the major players in social media, contrast in color and user experience controls creates meaning for the creator and the browser. How much is too much, and how can brands take these lessons back to their own Web strategy?

Social media today is really quite crude. Much like Bell’s first phone experiment it’s tedious and cumbersome. But also like those early phone models, they’re incredibly important to understand now as part of your brand strategy.

There’s nothing worse than the sinking feeling when someone with a large following blasts your brand. But it’s not a crisis, it’s an opportunity: to demonstrate that the brand is human, engaged, and helpful. Here are a few guideposts I’ve developed to turn the tide when your brand gets slammed:

You may think of your avatar as “the fun you,” or, “the serious you” or “what’s most important to me” because you’re considering this picture to be in the context of your life. But to anyone looking at it, the avatar is you. That’s it. During that visitor’s experience of looking at your avatar, you’re not standing next to them giving them context.

Adding to all the ways that people are using Twitter, Oprah’s episode today is certain to launch the Twitter brand and the service to a new level of shaping public discourse.

In previous articles, I talked about basic narrative structure and how Microblogging feels like CB radio communications in the present. Building on that foundation is what leads to the topic here: Microblogging, when done right and viewed sequentially is essentially a screenplay. Especially in Twitter and identi.ca. This is what I think makes microblogging so [...]