Tag Archives: branding

Catapulting your brand

March 16th, 2010

Many young companies will leverage their founder’s or team’s personal brands to catapult the company’s brand. They’ll attempt to “get the word out” about the company’s product using the networks of their own team. They’ll try to mold the message of the company using their own voices rather than the company’s collective one. If you do it right, though, this catapulting process only lasts so long.

In the beginning your actions to help the company build its brand, or simply spread the word about something, may have a sizable impact. But as you continue you will notice your actions having a less and less of an impact. Sure, the metrics may stay the same (ie. the number of people you’re able to make aware of something) but it will be less noticeable than before.

This is a good thing. It means the company is growing up.

Jon Christopher’s new suit

October 23rd, 2009

My friend Jon Christopher has just launched a new site for himself. He’s run the Monday By Noon site and brand for years yet he never had a place all his own on the Web.

It is so very important for a designer/developer, freelance or otherwise, to have their own site. Personal branding is a crucial part of doing business online. The advent of the Web has made the world an incredibly small place and so competition for work can be fierce. One way to combat that is by building a strong brand for yourself, getting information about what you’re good at out into the public, and proving value with examples.

If you are a designer, developer, entrepreneur, or just someone that wants to get their name out there; I suggest following Jonathan’s lead. Kudos Jon, nice step forward.

A blog by any other name

April 13th, 2009

This personal blog of mine has been around for a long time. It started in 1996 but it wasn’t called cdevroe.com then. Over the years it has, for better or worse, transformed more than a few times. It has changed names, domains, services, software, designs, and purposes.

Today it changes again. I’ve decided that my personal blog being ‘named’ my name just wasn’t working. I’ve known this for a long time but I didn’t do anything about it because I wasn’t sure what to do. Finally I got sick and tired of thinking about it and just decided to name it after what it has already become, rather than naming it something I’d like it to become. If that makes any sense.

As of today this blog, which is still going to be my personal Web site in all of the glory that it has come to be, is known as First Initial, Last Name – The official Web site of Colin Devroe.

For several years I have admired the ‘blogs’ that have been branded with their own names yet are run by one or very few people. If you read this blog with any regularity you can probably guess the forthcoming list, but here it is anyway: Daring Fireball run by John Gruber, Waxy.org by Andy Baio, Avalonstar by Bryan Veloso, Waking Ideas by Daniel Nicolas, Monday by Noon by Jon Christopher – and many, many others. I’m listing my friends who are good examples because, well, they are my friends and this is my blog and I can do that sort of thing.

This doesn’t mean that I put my own personal blog in this same line up. I don’t. It isn’t worthy. Also, some of these examples shouldn’t be classified as blogs. Daring Fireball is a business. It is the way John feeds his family. It just so happens that John’s business is “blogging”. This site will never be a Daring Fireball.

So First Initial, Last Name it is. I may grab an appropriate domain name for it, at some point, but I’ve always done more than fine with cdevroe.com so I don’t see that happening any time soon. Who types in domain names more than once or twice anyway, really? You should have subscribed to this site by now.

Side note: I’ve recently added the Share This button to my site (come to this post to see it). If you feel that anything I share on this site is worthy of letting others know about, please consider using this button to make it quick and easy to share the post, photo, or video on your service of choice.

Thanks to all of you that subscribe, read, and participate on my site. I really do appreciate it.

“We just posted loads of clips all over the freakin’ place!”

April 1st, 2008

Ever since Viddler announced that Tubemogul now supported Viddler as a distribution point, we’ve been seeing this more and more. People that upload their video to every single video sharing site in order to gain exposure for their show, product, etc. etc.

I get the point. I see the strategy. And, I can’t really blame anyone for spreading their work all over the place in order to get exposure from each of the communities (or audiences as some like to call them) that each of these services have worked very hard to foster.

But is this strategy a good one? Is the benefit great enough to actually recommend this type of marketing? I don’t believe it is, but I’m willing to learn otherwise.

WineLibraryTV is obviously one of the flagship video podcasts that uses the Viddler player. Each episode, since they are embedded on the show’s main Web site, get thousands if not tens of thousands of views. These numbers do not directly reflect the entire audience, since they offer their shows also in Quicktime format for playing within iTunes, iPod, etc. From what I’ve been able to research – the number of people that download the Quicktime format of the show far exceed the number of people that watch the show in the Viddler player.

All of that being said; WineLibraryTV still uploads their videos to YouTube (and maybe other sites too?). Perhaps the strategy here is to, hopefully, get some viewers through YouTube back to their main site. This strategy seems to make sense, but when you look at their YouTube account you see that most episodes only have around 100 views on them. In the realm of WineLibraryTV, that is nothing.

But, some may say “Why not? It doesn’t hurt!”. This might be true, and one could also argue that with services like TubeMogul, it is downright easy. But, one has to ask themselves if they’d rather spread themselves out all over the Internet, or be able to strictly control their brand.

As you know, I’ve been putting together a strategy of “Bringing it all together” wherein I’m starting to take much more control over what I “put out there” and how it is displayed, shared, etc. So perhaps my opinion is skewed and I’m missing something – but really – I feel that if someone’s content is good enough, it won’t matter where they put it. People will come, watch, and interact.

This post was prompted by my seeing this: “We just posted loads of clips all over the freakin’ place!“. When I loaded up the list of places and videos and the links to each, I was amazed (ok, I even LOLed a little). I’m sitting here wondering if this strategy has worked for them or not. Wondering if it was worth the effort or – if it diluted their brand at all.

Maybe I’ll have to do some further research through interviewing people that have done both. Ze Frank comes to mind as someone that has controlled his brand extremely well (in my opinion). Perhaps I’ll ask him and someone who has spread themselves all over to see if either strategy has its own set of benefits.

I’m eager to learn. Opinions?