The Great Recession was hard enough. We had to let good people go. My guess is you did, too. We know marketing departments were decimated in general. All that was painful and grossly unfair. Who would have thought the recovery could be harder? Stressful times when the entire world worried about survival, jobs, the future.

Having cut near to the bone, the strengths and weaknesses of those who remain stand in high relief as work flows in again. Those newly-revealed strengths are as surprising as the weaknesses, causing alternatively smiles and frowns. It’s interesting. Delightful. Depressing. And stressful.

As we staff up (hiring six people in just six weeks), the nature of the stress has changed. We’ve got the manpower but new hires have got to be trained in the way we do things. No organization does things quite like the other. For a while, they’ll be useful only in varying degrees before they kick into high gear no matter how smart or competent they are. At every level, people are working double time—doing their jobs and training the new. This is stressful.

The newbies also need to be integrated into the firm’s culture, recognizing that such a rapid influx of new people also changes the culture in subtle ways yet to be understood. That integration is stressful, too.

Managing cash flow and other business challenges seems almost child’s play by comparison. And no amount of stress coming out of a recession makes life during a severe recession seem any less bleak. It’s great to be on the mend. Great to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But who would have thought recovery would arrive with its own set of challenges?

Last Monday, I was asked by The Washington Times to comment on the change of the YMCA to The Y, a logo that had remained unchanged since 1967. The reporter took good notes so I didn’t have to:

Burkey Belser, president of Greenfield/Belser Ltd., a well-known brand design firm in Washington, agrees with the updated branding of The Y, with which he was not involved, calling these types of moves a “natural progression.”

For his company, “our goal is to try not to redesign but to realign with contemporary goals,” he said. “I would say that a name generally suggests some effort on the part of the owner to refresh the brand in the mind of its audience.”

Mr. Belser also noted that because the group’s activities are so wide-ranging and ecumenical and lacking in a specifically Christian focus, The Y more accurately describes it than a religiously specific term does.

Research studies also prove that the average person only remembers two- or three-word symbols, he said, and the new one-letter name puts a larger emphasis on youth.

“I think its the idea that they wanted to be more associated with youth, and it’s possible that their demographic was growing older and they wanted to recapture their youth market,” he said.

Source: washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/12/ymca-changes-its-logo-to-just-the-y/

I did mention that the Village People’s rousing song would be forced to be shortened dramatically but the reporter didn’t pick up on my humor. But, we can do it, right? All together now, “Y…! …Y…!” There’s no need to feel down, but it just isn’t the same. On the other hand, I never made the “C” in the right direction anyway.

We’ve all seen them before: Poorly lit, sterile blue background, noticeably uncomfortable black suit, awkward expression. What I’m referring to here is the dreaded FAILED CORPORATE HEADSHOT.

These nasty little buggers have been haunting the marketing materials of some of the smartest companies in the world for nearly a century now. More recently, they’ve managed to find their way onto some of the leading websites around the world, readily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection and, hopefully, a good sense of humor.

So what do we do about this irksome pandemic? Here are few suggestions to get you started:

Whenever possible, think beyond headshots
Company-wide portrait sessions shouldn’t be afterthoughts. Just like the design of a website, they should be considered part of the overall branding strategy of a company. And while the actual headshots may be here to stay, a lot of companies are now adding a second employee portrait to their marketing mix. Environmental portraits (i.e. those shot in an actual environment, as seen above, rather than in front of a background) are a great way to add personality to the subject and a sense of space around your employees. If you have nice offices, this is a great way to show them off. Even if you don’t, a good photographer can make it seem like you do. For a unique take on attorney portraits, check out Archer Norris’ recently launched website: archernorris.com/attorneys.

Don’t hire the same guy that did your high school portrait
Go ahead, dust off that old yearbook and take a look. This guy has about a 1 in 10 success rate, mainly because he never took the time to develop a rapport with the subject. It was one and done: Same lighting, same pose. Don’t let that guy anywhere near your employees.

Consider wardrobe direction and make-up
It may sound like overkill, but you’d be amazed how much these two add-ons can make or break a photo shoot. Don’t want everyone wearing a black suit and a red power tie? Now’s your chance to make sure that doesn’t happen. Don’t want Sue to wear that aggressively patterned floral dress? Put it in the memo.

Last but not least, try to get employees to buy into the idea beforehand
Whether you like it or not, your employees have witnessed these failed headshots before. And I can guarantee you they are scared. Unless primed to think otherwise, your employees will begrudgingly arrive on photo day with the preconception that they, too, will fall victim to this corporate headshot curse. So, what’s a marketing team to do? Well, the main thing to do is get rid of that high-school-portrait mentality. Go ahead, show off the website of that great photographer you just hired; give a little sneak-peek into your amazing new website design; tell everyone that there will be a stylist on-site. Anything to make the whole experience seem less mundane. If you add a little excitement to the mix, I guarantee it will pay off.

There are several steps you will need to take when preparing, planning and executing your site that will make—or break—the success of your rankings in Google and other search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should not be an afterthought when redesigning your website. It’s not something that you can just hook on like a trailer and expect to tow along behind you. For effective SEO, begin at the beginning.

How does it all work?
In order to optimize your site successfully, you need to understand how search engines work and how individuals use search engines. A search engine analyzes accessible content on the Internet in order to display the most relevant results to the user. The goal is to be high up on that results list.

Guidelines to SEO success for your website
As you design and build your site, SEO should stay top of mind.

Your site needs a clear, well-organized and consistent hierarchical structure. Every page of your site should be interlinked. Cross-linking pages aids your SEO rankings and also the user experience. Providing relevant, related information delivers a richer experience for the user and prevents dead-end pages.

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I have to stop thinking of our website as the center of our marketing universe. It’s simply no longer the case. Recently, I was looking up at the night sky when it occurred to me that the canopy of stars above me is very much like the Internet. There are, after all, more than 150,000,000 websites and 200,000,000 blogs—and each one is a tiny dot in the firmament. Sure, some are brighter than others but very, very few.

Suddenly I realized that the only efficient way to expand your online radiance was to stop imagining your website to be a pole star but rather to be one star in a constellation. That constellation is anchored by your site (the globe in the image above) but completed by the other stars of search engine optimization and advertising, blogs (whether your own or your guest posts to another), YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

It’s unlikely your star will ever shine bright enough to overtake the brightest stars in the sky. So organize your marketing efforts in 2010 to get noticed and be remembered. We live in a new brand world. Be Orion. Be the Big Dipper. But be something. Or burn out.