Branding and press releases

Day365
I went to a chamber of commerce talk today about Branding. I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know, but it gave me a chance to think more about the focus of my site and the changes I’ve been making.

(i.e. going from a “Show the world what you are giving up for your New Year’s Resolution” bunch of t-shirts and buttons to “givitup is all about fresh starts and positive changes. Whether you are giving up a bad habit or putting on a good one it' s been proven that goals shared stick better! So tell the world with our unique t-shirts, mugs, buttons, magnets and more- it might just inspire them to make a change too!”

I wrote press releases about my newest Christian items today, which I’ll print all of tomorrow, but I tried to stress there’s enough negative and crude t-shirts walking around. My goal is being positive and inspiring others to be so too.
One note about the press release services online, more and more are charging. I had to search hard to come up with 6 that are still free. (And I guess we’ll see how good they end up being!)

Branding your business

Day362
I read a great article on line tonight: Little known ways to brand on the cheap: 99 tips for poor web startups.

Here are just two of the tips I plan to research further –

22. Social Bookmarking–where to start? Start by building a profile and keeping it active at all the top bookmarking sites. A few sites we recommend are: Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. Each has a different audience, so some of your content will do better at some sites over others. Because of their differences, it is important to be an active member of all the sites and submit your content at all of them.

26. E-profiles: manage your reputation. If a potential customer types in your name into a search engine, what sort of results will they see in the top 10? It’s key for you to secure the top 10 results in Google, Yahoo and MSN for searches relating directly and indirectly (if possible) to your brand. You need to be the one defining what people see when they search for you, not your competition. Start by building e-profiles on authority domains such as MySpace, Squidoo, AboutUs, WordPress, Blogger/ Blogspot, MSN Spaces, TypePad, Newsvine, LinkedIn, Rollyo, Wikipedia, etc. Don’t let someone else define who you are.

Read the entire article here