Comments on: Blogs as Brands

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Wed, 18 May 2005 22:08:39 +0000

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.

By: Toby

Toby — Wed, 18 May 2005 19:17:30 +0000

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

By: Peter Flaschner

Peter Flaschner — Wed, 18 May 2005 18:47:03 +0000

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!

By: Olivier Piazza

Olivier Piazza — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:49:54 +0000

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

By: John Evans

John Evans — Wed, 18 May 2005 15:14:18 +0000

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.