One of my favorite bloggers, Toby Bloomberg from diva marketing, has been interviewed over at Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book blog – Naked Conversations: Interview: Toby Bloomberg.
Here’s a snippet that got my attention – Toby talking about how blogging has impacted her business:
‘Surprisingly, blogging has done something else for my business. Within a very short period and on very little capital, it has positioned Diva Marketing Blog as a brand unto itself. I’ve been referred to many times as “the marketing diva,” a wonderful compliment.’
Interestingly this resonates with my own experience here at ProBlogger.net. I’m not in Toby’s league – but have been interested the way in which this blog has not only lifted my own profile as a blogger over the past few months – but the way in which ‘ProBlogger’ has been referred to by a number of other bloggers as a brand of its own.
To be honest I’m not sure what this really means or what to do with it – but would like to explore it more in the months ahead.
I’m very aware that there are some smart marketing, branding, PR types who read this blog – and would love to hear your opinions on how you’d build Problogger.net as a brand (if indeed you think it is or potentially could be one).
Update – Peter has a great post about blogs and brands here.
You’d need to buy up all the domains, Darren. I see that .org and .biz, even .co.uk are still available, though .com, and .info are taken. If you don’t have these, you have to ask what are the owners are going to do with them. With such a role-specific name as Problogger, they’re sure to be used for something similar to your own operation. I suspect that if you had .com, you’d be using it in preference to .net, so it’s probably a cybersquatter waiting for an offer of $2000+. I have a similar problem with Syntagma, which is owned across the board by a super-small UK tech writing business. Ah, well, life wasn’t meant to be easy, as Malcolm Fraser used to say.
Buiding a brand first means giving value. You often encourage blog owners to keep a high quality content, to publish regularly, to answer the comments… all these attitudes create a valuable and trusty ProBlogger brand, in line with what is expected for such a “claim” (Pro + Blogger). With times, keeping focused on these values, you will indeed have a real brand that you’ll have created at low costs. I mean low costs in terms of media expenditure (no ads, no media buying, only your blog’s costs). Of course, the time spent and the quality of the work have a real cost. But we must admit that it seems to be a real cheap way to create a brand.
Last, focusing on domain names is one thing. Don’t forget that a brand needs to be protected by copyright and trademarks. You need to check this out before someone else does it…
Congratulations for your good job
Olivier
I recently wrote a post titled “Why blogs are so good for your brand” over at http://www.theblogstudio.com/blog/ Short of dropping a load of cash, I simply cannot imagine a more powerful branding tool. Rather than rehashing all my reasons here, I’ll let the post speak for itself.
Thanks as always Darren!
Darren – thanks for the very kind words…not sure that I’m in your league! My 2 cents is that problogger is one of the best resources about blogging; lots of up-to-date, practical information in an easy to navigate site… that seems like a pretty good place to start in developing your “brand strategy.” Keep up the great work. Toby
Thanks Toby – some days I just don’t feel I have the time to really develop a brand intentionally – writing, designing and interacting with readers can be so time consuming. I know all of this helps with brand – however its more of an accidental brand than anything else.
Thanks everyone else for the advice too. I tried to get ProBlogger.com before I started here at problogger.net – unfortunately they wanted to sell it to me at an inflated cost – something I didnt feel I wanted to do.