If you are to be successful in just about any type of business venture, you need a brand. A brand could be one of any number of things, it might be different than what is in your mind.
If you are a soup company, Campbell’s is a great brand. If you are a discount store, maybe Target or Walmart are super brands. If you have a website, though, what would your brand be? We’ll explore that in this article.
I started out on the Web in the early 1990s. I didn’t think about a brand or worry about anything even similar to that. I just made a few websites and had fun. I didn’t worry about making money, I had a job, or had other ways of making money. The web was just for fun.
These days, though, the Web is both for fun and it is my job. Even on projects that I do for fun, or not for making a profit, I still consider my brand. I want all of what I do to be tied to my brand. I want that if people go to one of my websites, they know right away that “this is Bob’s site.” It is something that is important. It builds your level of trust, and also gives you more perceived expertise.
About 15 years ago when I first started getting serious about using the Web as a platform for earning a living, I did not start out in terms of building a brand. Just after 2000, my first “real” internet business went online. It was “WowPhilippines,” a website that allowed people to send gifts to their loved ones in the Philippines. When I got that site up and running, and was focused on building up the site and the brand, my brand at that time was WowPhilippines. Today, more than a decade later, I have more than one brand. I still have the WowPhilippines brand, but I also have my personal brand. A lot of people come to the site because of who owns it – ME! A lot of people when they realize that I own it, they want to do business on the site, because they know me and trust me. They have had interaction with me, and know that I am not out to rip them off. If they go to other sites, competitors, they don’t know for sure who they are dealing with.
How did I build up this personal brand?
Basically, through blogging, I have come into contact with many people. I have built that further through Social Media like Facebook and Twitter. All of these things have added to my brand. In fact, not only have they added to my brand, they have allowed me to create a new brand. As I say, before I got active in these other types of branding, my brand was WowPhilippines. Now, probably a much bigger brand is the “Bob Martin” brand, and also the “MindanaoBob” brand. Thousands, really tens of thousands of people know me through Bob Martin or MindanaoBob brands.
So, how did I build these brands? I worked and worked hard to do it. I blogged. I interacted with people. If somebody left a comment on my blog, I replied to them with an answer to their question, or an acknowledgment that I did read their comment, and a greeting to them. This made people who read my website grow a personal relationship with me. The vast majority of my site readers have never met me in person, but they consider me to be their friend. If they do come to Davao, they look me up and go have coffee with me. They almost always bring me a gift if they come and plan to meet me. In other words, I am not just another guy with a blog, I am their friend. So, if they need to buy a product or service that I sell, they are dealing with a friend, not just some unknown, faceless person.
After social media came on the scene, after I had already been blogging for some time, this only added to my ability to interact with my readers, and build even stronger friendships. Building stronger friendships online lead, in turn, to a better-recognized brand. Having a better-recognized brand lead to more authority, more expertise, better ability to build up my brand even more. It’s a circular arrangement. The more you do, things just keep growing.
Is your band important?
You better believe it is! If you want to earn a living online, having a strong and trusted brand is the best thing you can own. Even if your website not quite as good as some of your competitors, your brand and the trust that you have built up is way more important. Nothing is worth more than trust and strength in branding.
So, as you can see, building a brand is important. Very important. Probably the most important thing you can do on the net.
But, building a brand is not easy, nor is it quick. It takes a lot of work, and it takes consistency and honesty over a longer period of time. If you can devote the time, remain consistent and always be honest, and take the upper ground, you will succeed in building a strong brand. If you cannot do that, you will never have a strong brand. If you don’t have a strong brand, in the long run, you will not succeed.
What do you think, do you have a brand? If not, are you working on building one? Let me know in the comments what kinds of things you are doing to build your brand. I will be interested to hear, and maybe even pick up a few new ideas for myself!
Apparently don’t have a brand. I write Articles for my site but I don,t seem to get any visitors. Since I don’t have a counter to tell me how many people have visited, I have to rely on comments and so far that had been dismal,especially after the first article. I believe leaving comments makes for a better blog. It tends to correct misinformation or adds a new look at something missed as well as let me know that people are reading It and who is reading it.
Hi Joe – You are still in the early days. When I started LiP, it probably took 3 months before I got even 1 comment, so you are way ahead of me. Probably 3 years before I had an article with more than a dozen comments. It takes time, and work. Lots of both!
Same with starting any new business from scratch, many lookers and browsers, takes time to get known and for people to feel comfortable and trust.
Like they say “Rome wasn’t built in a day”.
Exactly, Chas!
I was mostly a ” read only ” websurfer until I quite accidentaly became interested in Iligan City, a place I found while websurfing. Eventually I actually went there because of so many things that interested me in pics, videos and items I had read about it on the internet. In finding that they were trying to improve tourism to this place I thought I would put some of the highlights of my visit on places on the internet where it would get best possible exposure. I put up a slide show on Youtube under the name ” Jollibeefan ” as I had become a fan of this company prior to, during and after my first visit.
Included in my initial websurfing of Iligan City, I checked out the most popular travel websites to see what comments and reviews had to say. Many of those reviews were several years old, or more. After my first visit I found that some of those reviews had obsolete information as things in Iligan City had changed since they were written.
As the word ” Jollibee ” is a copyrighted name I decided it was best not to continue using Jollibeefan in posting reviews, articles etc. on websites, even though I am a big fan of Jollibee, and it would be better if I came up with something a bit more appropriate and descriptive. Since my name is Bob and I am from New York, about as far away from Iligan City, Mindanao as anyone could be I figured the Brand for my articles and reviews would be quite applicable. Bob ( from a far away place ) New York.
I don’t consider myself as a ‘ Blogger ” and in knowing there is a lot more to establishing and maintaining a website than just putting items on it as in a ” post it and forget it ” type of thing, why not place the information I wanted to convey in places where it would have the greatest possible exposure to an audience with an interest in that information. With many of the things I write about I may have several different versions of the same item to best suit the topic to the website it is going on. to go along with the theme of that particular website and its readership.
Do I make a lot of money with the many things I have written about or posted on travel review websites ? No, I don’t make anything on a monetary basis from any of it and I have no forseeable plans on starting up a blog or website to compete with those who have published what I have written. I always get a lot of great comments on Bob Martins websites, Just the other day one of the travel review websites sent me an e mail that my reviews have generated over 7000 hits on their site.
So what then, do I get out of all of this ? It tells me that there is interest in the things I have written about a place that I feel is worthy of tourism and a fun place to visit. A place sometimes maligned by its location and an occasional negative commercial press report not much different from many other places in the world. Additionally it has established in some ways, ” Bob New York ” as a brand name.
Hi Bob – I think you were wise to change from using the Jollibeefan moniker. If you really got established and then Jollibee asked you to stop using the name, you would have lost something that you had really built up for a long time. Your current moniker is better and no real chance of losing it.