Branding Blog

Advertising vs. Being Remarkable

"Advertising is a tax you pay for being unremarkable."
-Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens

There are STILL plenty of very smart people in the world who have not begun to realize the power of the web. For some, it's a fear of technology. Others have been too busy engaged in successful business. Still others just have their heads in the sand.

I was having a conversation with a group of very successful brick and mortar jewelers a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about my blogging class and they asked if I knew of any jewelers who have had any measure of success with blogging. I pointed them to Ice.com and their use of a blog strategy to tie their name to celebrities and provide lots of in-bound links to products.

Then, they asked me if I could name a business that has achieved any kind of success with YouTube?

Listen to Grok on Webmaster Radio

Enjoy the latest Blog Buzz on Webmaster Radio.

My friends from GrokDotCom host a daily show at Webmaster Radio. The show airs live at 4:55pm weekdays. Or listen to the archives any time.

Grok, Grok, Grok

My buddies over at FutureNow have consolidated all of their bloggy efforts into the NEW GrokDotCom blog.

It's a great new site powered by a ContentRobot installation of WordPress with some very cool technology humming in the background.

In addition to the original content, it pulls in feeds from some great marketing blogs and sites. It may just be the only blog you need to read! I've added the post feed to my sidebar. Check it out.

Blog as a Marketing Tool

I get a lot of email asking me to promote a book, or a web site site on this blog. I usually ignore it, unless they are offering to send me something free. Then I respond with my street address.

So, it's a rare occasion when someone gets my attention out of the blue and I actually spend a little time checking out what they are talking about.

Tonight, an email arrived from Kim Kotecki describing a new (yeah right) kind of blog...an xblog. OK, I thought. Let's see what an xblog is. Kim described it as an experiential blog with the goal of getting the readers involved with some kind of action.

I clicked. I read. Pretty cool actually. I liked the premise. Just two people having fun. No hard sell of any kind of product. No ads, except for a book. Wait, there's a link for club members only....takes me to a place where I can PAY to see more content. No big deal. I'm not paying...back to the site.

I read more of the funny activities and start thinking that these are good ideas for me to do with my kids...who think dad is about half-baked most of the time anyway. (Just last night I came into the living room and declared that you're never too old to have a happy childhood...I read it on the web 24 hours BEFORE Kim's email.)

OK, let's see who these two crusaders are...follow the links back to that club. Wait a minute! These two people have a business wrapped around this idea. He's a public speaker, they sell candles and cards and other products. Very good.

They did it right! No hard sell on the blog. Just get me interested. Start the scent trail. Let the reader "discover" the rest. Beautiful.

If you want to see how to use a blog to help grow your business, check it out.

If You're Getting This Blog through Bloglet...

You should notice that I'm switching over to a new service called Feedblitz. If you are subscribed via bloglet, your subscription has already been transferred to Feedblitz....UNLESS you subscribed anonymously.

"But Dave, What if I don't remember if I subscribed anonymously?"

For a few days, I'll keep both services active. If you get this post via Bloglet and NOT via Feedblitz, you'll likely need to resubscribe.

Or, check your junkmail filter and make sure the Feedblitz email is not marked as junk or spam.

WHY am I doing this? Feedblitz seems to be taking a more pro-active approach to make sure the posts arrive and you will also get images.

Welcome Holly!

Let's give a big bloggy welcome to Holly Buchanan and her Marketing to Women Online blog!

She and Michele Miller have picked up on a Brand Autopsy story about Ann Taylor using a persona for each of their retail divisions. It's hard enough explaining to someone what I mean when I'm developing personae for clients, but Holly does a terrific job of explaining why it should be a plural word instead of singular.

Link: Marketing to Women Online: Ann Taylor Persona.

"The more you speak to the average, the more average your message becomes."

Blogging is good for your BRAIN

Thanks to Chris Busch for pointing out this story from the Eide Neurolearning Blog.  Read it. It's long, it's detailed. Here's the bottom line (literally the last paragraph in the story).

In conclusion, it looks as if blogging will be very good for our brains. It holds enormous potential in education, and it could take societal communication and creative exchange onto a whole new level.

There you have it. If you are just a blog-reader and not a blog-writer, you could be single-handedly holding back the progress of all mankind.

By the way, Chris was in my first class and has posted 164 stories to his blog since August.

Why aren't you blogging?

Seriously, why aren't you blogging? It's fun. It's pretty easy as far as technology goes, and it's a great way to establish your own personal brand.

The hardest part is finding the time to get yourself up the steepest part of the learning curve of whatever software system you've chosen to use. Learning TypePad is pretty straightforward. But, if you're not comfortable learning new technology, it may take several weeks, and you might get frustrated enough to abandon all hope.

That's why I developed my Blogging Workshop and teach it at Wizard Academy. I teach the system I use. I like TypePad because I'm comfortable here. It's easy enough for anyone to use and to figure out on their own. Trust me. You don't NEED to take my class to learn how to blog.

Here's why you might want to take it: If your time is extremely valuable to you, then the airfare, hotel and driving to the course will be significantly less than learning to blog on your own. That's right. You'll get the confidence and experience in ONE DAY to get past the steepest part of the learning curve with classmates that are in the same boat as you.

If you'd like to visit about the class, you'll find my contact information here somewhere.

So, Why aren't you blogging yet?  Hmmmm?

Happy Blogiversary Michele!

Michele Miller's been blogging a full year today! She was the first person to read my book (edit it, actually) and opened her Typepad account the next day.

Way to go Michele!

Link: WonderBranding: Marketing to Women: My One Year Blogiversary.

Why to Blog

I've got no excuse for not blogging up a storm lately. None. So sue me.

Just browsing through my Typepad stats though makes me excited all over again. Search engines still LOVE blogs. Non-bloggers would be amazed at what you can become known for simply by blogging.

A month ago I took some photos of a Mercedes G500 that I was evaluating for my buddy Vince at The Weekend Drive. I posted them on a Typepad Photo Gallery, but really didn't reference them anywhere else.

At the time of this post, the gallery is the #4 result on the Google search phrase "Mercedes G500". Go figure.

By the way, there are some pretty cool pictures there and you can get an idea of the type of whacko place I live in. Old WWII munitions bunkers. It's all decommissioned. However, we still have active Minuteman III ICBM's buried all over the place here.

A Google search for "Branding" puts this blog at #10. Not bad. Rock on, Google.