How many times did you just buy something because it was from a certain manufacturer and didn’t really care to check if it really had quality or not? You know the manufacturer has good history, a huge amount of people use and like it, it has never let you down before and even if it did, you would probably still buy from the manufacturer. This explains the power of brands and branding. When talking about online businesses or just non-profitable websites or blogs looking for readers, it is just as important. I am going to be concentrating on online branding in this blog post because it will have more benefit to you (my reader).
What is branding?
Branding is basically the process of assigning an identity to your product or a single individual and then later using that identity in various marketing campaigns and promotions to build up credibility.
A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.
- Seth Godin’s definition of a brand
What are the benefits of branding?
Every company, both offline and online, should strive to make the perfect identity for themselves. Other than just working hard to improve their product or service, branding can go a long way into improving sales even if your product is not as good as the competition.
The most important thing in branding is being consistent. Using the same colors, the same fonts, the same logo, the same catch-phrase. You want your identity to be recognizable by just looking at the color combinations and not even trying to read the text.
When you manage to turn your company logo, your personal name, surname or photo associated with the words “quality” or “success” – then you know you have done a good job.
Branding and blogging (example)
Let’s say you have a blog with great branding done on it. You continue to write good blog posts and you gain more and more readers/subscribers every day. Readers that trust you, that like and share your opinion. When they see your blogs name somewhere else on banners or they meet you on a forum and see read your name or signature links, they will associate you with quality and helpful content.
They will easily forgive you
One of the best benefits of having a recognizable brand is that your users/readers will easily forgive you if you make a mistake such as writing a low quality blog post or having some kind of manufacturing error on your physical product. They will not reach for the unsubscribe button as easily as they might when you are just somebody random and unknown without a recognizable identity. Having a excellent brand will not make up but a useless product or poor quality blog though.
Two types of online branding
When talking about existing online, there are two basic types of branding you can choose:
- personal branding
- personal branding with an alias
- company branding
Personal branding
When doing personal branding, an individual business owner or blogger chooses to brand his name alongside a photo of himself. He uses this name while commenting on other blogs, participating on forum and various other social networking websites.
Personal branding with an alias
Some bloggers or website owners that like to remain anonymous or if they have been using a certain alias for a long time, they might want to use that alias for branding. In some situations using an alias can be a good decision but it’s always better to not be anonymous. Check out my last post about The Importance Of Not Being Anonymous and find out why I think it’s better to use your read name instead of an alias..
Here are some examples of personal branding with and without aliases:
Head of the webspam team at Google, Matt Cutts (his blog) is a great example of personal branding without even having a logo, just the name itself.
Robb Sutton has a great thing going on with transforming his name into a stylish logo. Best way to do personal branding in my opinion.
Another blog I read is the David Shaw Blog which is another great and simple example of personal branding with your real name. Maybe not as stylish as Robb Sutton but still very effective.
Another simple and effective example of personal branding from my friend Ileane. I like this blog title because, compared to the other examples, the title is really a sentance that looks like an announcement: "Ms. Ileane Speaks!" that subconsciously demands attention.
18-year-old student and blogger Melvin Dichoso has another great example of personal branding with even a nice associative logo by his name. This is also a variation of using only your first name and not your entire name.
An "extreme" example of not using your entire name and maybe kinda going into the alias party of branding.
It is important to know that you don’t have to be a graphic artist to do good branding. Most of it is based on research and a good and consistent catch-phrase can go a long way into improving your brand.
Company branding
If you have a business website or one which is run by a few people or a blog with a few friends, you will want to choose a name and logo that will represent your site online. I’ve came across some great examples in the last few months that I have been interested in branding and some of them have really WOW-ed.
So here are some examples of company branding that I would like to share with you:
One of the best, if not THE best example of online branding I have ever come across. This "Fat Cow Hosting" company has it all. They have this great cow mascot and an entire virtual world build around it. They invite visitors to join The Herd, they promise "good hosting, no bull", etc. Really a great job!
Brian Clark's Copyblogger is a simple and associative brand that everyone knows about. It is a blog about writing copy on blog and you can't miss it when you see the typewriter font even if it doesn't have a vector logo.
An excellent example of a clean and simple blog branding with a logo along with a 2-color scheme. This is great because even without the text, the logo itself would represent the blog.
An example of a sentence-like, color-scheme branding method with a nice catch phrase that makes it clear what the site is about.
It’s great to see an evolution of a brand. Jack Curtis from “Sequence Hosting” is doing a great job with the branding and re-branding of his hosting company website and I’m looking forward to seeing his results.
Blogussion is a great example of what you can do with creative wordplay, in this case "blog discussion" and a very simple logo/brand.
Branding and marketing
After a successful branding operation you will want to use your new brand for marketing as well. Like i mentioned before, it is very important to stay consistent with marketing material by using the same or similar color schemes. When each of your banners looks like it could represent a different company, then you know you have to go back to the drawing board.
Here are some useful links that can help you with branding:
Graphic Leftovers
Graphic Leftovers is a great stock site where you can buy among a lot of other graphic stuff, a great logo that can help you brand your product or website. The prices are quite low and if nothing else, some logos there can give you an idea to make your own. Besides logo designs, Graphic Leftovers can help you with hundreds of banner designs.
Graphic River
Graphicriver.net is one of the most popular stock graphics places on the Internet being a part of the also popular Envato marketplace chain. I’ve came across some fantastic and professional banner designs for affordable prices that can make a great difference in your branding. There are dozens of categories worth scrolling through so check it out!
Thanks for reading and sharing this post on your favourite social networking sites. I hope branding goes successful for you and that you have fun doing it! Feel free to ask and questions about branding in the comments because there is probably something I’ve missed.
Dennis Edell (3)
Alison Moore Smith (2)
Agent Deepak (1)
Google Chrome SEO... (1)
@Ileane
says
Gordon,
Oh wow, another great post from you. And I don’t say that just because you mentioned me here, but thanks for doing that. I love the way to separate different aspects of branding – personal versus company because some people might not think about the distinction between the two.
Bloggers need to hear about how important it is to create a positive image for their brand.
Thanks so much!
@sequencehosting
says
Another fantastic blog post Gordon. I have to agree ‘fatcow’ take branding to the next level. I think their branding has to be the biggest reason for their success. I have just re-tweeted this post.
I look forward to seeing more of your posts.
Jack
@AgentDeepak
says
Nice awesome article. Nicely written. This is my first visit here and I am already loving it.
I also read ” The Importance Of Not Being Anonymous” as advised. I have also started to realize that I should be using my real name on Internet.
Deepak | Agent 001´s last blog ..Christmas Gift: 7 Dollar – 7 Minutes – 7 Days
@McKnightikus
says
@ileane I’m happy you like it. I wanted to mention some examples so I thought, might as well be people that are my “online buddies” and help them get some exposure than some random blogs
@Jack Yes we spoke about Fat Cow and their branding a while ago when you asked me for advice, for your banners or something like that. They really don’t a great job. I’d buy their hosting just because of the cow, hehe!
@Deepak I’m glad my posts helped you out. When you decide to use your real name, do me a favor and keep an eye on your results, then get back to me with your experience. It’s always nice to see people benefit from your advice.
I got an email today from a person asking me if I could put him on my mailing list so I came to realize that my Feedburner mailing list icon (the one that was next to my RSS icon in the top right corner of the blog) wasn’t really noticeable. Therefore I replace the About text with a nice little email subscription box which I will pretty-up when later on.
Thank you for your mail Rick and thanks for the comments guys!
@AgentDeepak
says
Hi Gordon
I will sure keep you updated. By the way so far I have been using my nick Agent 001 but starting today I have combined it with my real name ‘Deepak’.
I hope to see good results. Also I have got some good branding idea from you post. I will inform you when I implement it.
Thanks again.
Deepak | Agent 001´s last blog ..Christmas Gift: 7 Dollar – 7 Minutes – 7 Days
Hallo Gordon,
Very interested in this post as it’s closely connected with the domain name branding strategy that I’m beginning to develop at http://whatawebsite.org/ …
Totally agree with you about consistency and expectations being central to successful branding ….
Cheers
Will
Will´s last blog ..Brianwave – The Alexa Ranking Contest
@McKnightikus
says
Indeed, you are doing a good job with your website branding as far as I can see. Simple yet effective and I love the colors you used.
Your BlogEngage vote buttons are not working. it is a common error when you set them up that they point to the “submit new article” feature instead of the voting page for your topic. You should look into that.
One piece of friendly advice I can give you is to maybe concentrate your website on the 3 colors that are in your logo (the cubes) which are red, green and orange. There is a rule about using colors on websites, I think 2 or 3 is recommended and 4 is max. It’s harder to navigate when it’s rainbow-ish and the social bookmarking icons also don’t help. There should be an option to hide the social bookmarking icons in the front page and for them to show up only when viewing a single post. Besides, I don’t think someone will share your blog post anywhere without clicking to read it first, thus why you don’t need social bookmarking icons showing up on the front page.
Hope it helps and thanks for visiting!
Hallo Gordon,
Thanks very much for the helpful advice – which I’ll follow up on as soon as I get a computer situation sorted out. My Laptop totally crashed on me and I’m just taking half an hour here on my girlfriend’s computer to catch up on a few messages before trying to sort it out – so sorry for the short reply. Back here again soon without computer stress I hope!
Cheers
Will´s last blog ..Brianwave – The Alexa Ranking Contest
I’ve been told and do believe my very simple DE is doingnicely for me all over the net. I also use my real name and logo/avatar everywhere I go.
I’ve been thinking of testing a bit; keeping the DE but maybe changing up the colors a bit, what do you think?
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Last Chance! MaxBlogPress Christmas 4 Plugin Package At 75% Off Deal Expires TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT!! PLUS Something Extra From Me
@McKnightikus
says
If I where you I would vector an image of my face. Something like Deepak has on his avatar a few comments above. It’s a great way to brand yourself but you have to make it simple and so that people recognize you from that vector illustration.
Here is an example: http://www.webdesign.org/img_articles/10424/compface.gif
It’s not difficult to do, you need something like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and there is a function called Trace or Auto Trace. You can also use http://www.vectormagic.com – it’s free!
Your current logo is ok but it just seems kinda ordinary and not noticeable very much. You want to stand out and the only thing that really stands out is the color red. Thanks for commenting and let me know what you decide to do, I would love to see the progress.
From the reaction I get now I have to disagree, and this is just the beginning.. Plus I don’t wanna scare people off with the face.
Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Last Chance! MaxBlogPress Christmas 4 Plugin Package At 75% Off Deal Expires TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT!! PLUS Something Extra From Me
@McKnightikus
says
It’s good to disagree – If you have been using it for a while then you shouldn’t change it at all. Besides, I’ve gotten use to it from the top 5 commentators list on my blog
Damn branding. You really should do it, but it seems to take too much time. Especially all the image tuning and things like that.
On the other hand if you use paid options to do the branding, then you have to dig deep into your pockets…
Bloggeri´s last blog ..The Silver Bullet for Blogging Success
@McKnightikus
says
You just have to be creative and as far as buying a logo goes, nobody can guarantee you that someone else is not using that logo (if you buy from graphic river or graphic leftovers) but it’s cheap (I didn’t find any single one that was over $5).
Branding can be a stressful process because you don’t want to make a mistake, if you do, you can end up wasting a lot of time but the up-side of it is that when you do it right the first time, you never have to do it again. You are the brand!
Thanks for visiting