I always enjoy reading Seth Godin’s blog as there’s lots of interesting insights and Seth has this wonderful ability of taking complex marketing related issues and making them very simple to understand.

A post of his I just enjoyed was about keeping things human. He uses an example of a sign that’s tacked onto UPS trucks that looks very ameteurish - but gets noticed.

I think the polished and professional look is fine, but sometimes if you’re a small one-man show, trying to look like a multi-national can work against you. It just feels hollow and empty; yet another faceless company claiming to be “best of breed” when in fact it’s one guy working out of a garage - and it’s not long before people discover that and you suddenly become unattractive; purely because of the deception.

There’s nothing wrong with humble beginnings as the guys from Google I’m sure would agree. The company was incorporated as Google Inc. on September 7, 1998 at a friend’s garage.

You can use the “underdog” status to your advantage.

Sometimes I think it’s very beneficial to look not-so-perfect as this reasonates with a particular type of reader. They arrive on a site and connect as they understand there’s a real live human being writing the words and not a bunch of highly paid copywriters. It can help reassure some visitors, and that turns into sales.

This doesn’t mean to say it’s a good idea to have content that’s jam packed full of errors, but just that sometimes not-so-perfect can be, well, perfect :). It’s worked for me anyway :)