Thoughts on Brand Associations and Power Stumbling
Before you get your hair tied up in knots, this isn't a blog review. I wouldn't even know where to start on a review for blog like "Dosh Dosh". No, these are just some of my thoughts on some articles that Maki published.
Brand Associations
Maki's latest article on how brand associations help to promote your website and business is right on the money. When I made my thoughts on blog hosting, self-hosted and otherwise known, Todd Morris of "Success with Todd" made a comment that was also right on the money. He said, "With domain names being so inexpensive, I can't really see the sense in using sub-domains for new blogs … unless it's a branding thing."
In a nutshell, branding which has already taken place with one domain or subdomain (and yes, www is a subdomain) can carry over to other subdomains. In some cases, it's the next best thing to sliced bread. Couple it with the fact that a new subdomain will probably get indexed faster than a new domain, it's a win-win situation for some people (like me). I was hem-hawing over getting new domains, using free subdomains at other places, or using my own subdomains when I wrote that I was planning on opening up Pandora's box and moving a couple of categories from this blog to dedicated blogs. After much thought, I'll definitely be using subdomains and I plan to start in April.
If you don't think untwistedvortex.com is branded-associated with my name yet, why don't you ask prominent bloggers like Darren Rowse (ProBlogger) who RT Cunningham is? If he knows me by my name and my blog (which he does), I'm pretty sure a lot of other people do as well. I'm not bragging. My domain name isn't a household name like yahoo.com and its many subdomains, but it could be. My first and last name already are, but for the wrong reasons (and don't call me Richie, or I'll hunt you down). It all depends on how long and how hard I want to work at it.
Power Stumbling
Back in March of 2007, Maki wrote a comprehensive guide to StumbleUpon and how to use it to bring massive traffic to your website. He followed it up later with two other articles which amended some of the tactics he originally endorsed. There's a lot of good information on how to use StumbleUpon to your advantage, but I have my own condensed version:
It doesn't matter if you're a top stumbler or not. It doesn't matter if you use StumbleUpon every day or not. What matters is that you rate and review as many websites as possible, and try not to do it for your own. Do you want to be a power stumbler? It's simple. Every time you see a pingback or a Google Alert (and I hope you use both), visit that website and stumble the page that links to you, but don't stop there. Stumble as many pages as you like on that website. In essence, stumbling more than you're stumbled by other people and stumbling people that link to you makes you a power stumbler.
Brand Associations and Power Stumbling
StumbleUpon uses avatars to represent the people that stumble you. Even if a member name is different than the name they use on their blog, for example, do you recognize that person? On StumbleUpon, Maki is Autorave. I didn't have to know that, or read it anywhere, to recognize it as his avatar. I knew it was him the first time he stumbled one of my posts. The anime-style images he uses on his blog brand-associated his avatar with his blog. In fact, I would have been surprised if I'd made the association without it being the correct association, that's how powerfully he's associated anime-style images with his blog.
If I was a smart guy (and I make no claims to that), I'd be using the vortex image in my header as an avatar everywhere, or possibly a variation of it that I've been toying with. Hindsight is 20/20, as people like to say, and it would probably take a while for that association to form this late in the game. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to start, though, would it?
Maki is a power stumbler, even if he never admits it. Am I a power stumbler? People like Jonathan C. Phillips of Freelance Folder and AgentSully of Life Learning Today seem to think so, but I'm not too sure about it.
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THough I like StumbleUpon, I cannot use the toolbar because
a) It doesn't work in Linux/64-bit OSes.
b) I never like additional browser toolbars anyway.
hari's last blog post..Papa Hari School of Politics
In your case, Hari, you can only stumble from an icon on link on a website that points to the page in question. I didn't know that Linux 64-bit wasn't supported by the toolbar in Firefox.
As far as extra toolbars go, I have 3 extra but the links are on the bookmarks toolbar and I can hide or unhide them at will. When I take a snapshot of a blog, I resise the window to 1024×768, hide all toolbars except the main one, and then hide the tabs (using an extension). I can have the top of my browser as clean as I need it to be.
I totally agree. Branding is of utmost importance in the social web. It is the best, simplest way to promote your work.
@hari
I'm running Linux/64bit with firefox and the SU toolbar works fine.
Really? The last time I checked, a few months ago, I couldn't find any link to download the SU toolbar for 64-bit Linux systems.
hari's last blog post..A couple of proposed changes
Coming to the topic of blog subdomains and domains, I've already established my blog well in hari.literaryforums.org before I bought the domain name harishankar.org.
hari's last blog post..A couple of proposed changes
Ah, but "Hari's Corner" is not mentally associated with "hari.literaryforums.org". I still can't remember the middle part, and I'm used to typing out URLs in the address bar (old habits die hard). If you changed the domain name (and this isn't a suggestion) to hariscorner.org or something like that, it would be a piece of cake. Or better yet, "haris.corner.org". You see my point?
Oh it's a piece of cake to shift the domain. That's the easy part.
But there's a huge mass of internal links pointing to hari.literaryforums.org, not to mention images and other resources. Plus I would possibly lose all the backlinks/SEO benefits/search indexed pages I've gained over a period of time. I know it's possible to do 301 redirection and stuff like that, but it's still a huge pain to move a whole domain over. And in spite of it all, I would probably lose a bunch of readers even if I left behind redirection.
I guess it's a little late to change the blog URL in my case after nearly 3 years (still a few months to go for that). Don't take me wrong though, I've considered this idea for ages before resigning to my present blog subdomain.
hari's last blog post..A couple of proposed changes
Strangely enough this is something I've been thinking about for a while. I have a number of online personas and I think it's time to consolidate them.
One of the reasons I don't use my full name much on my site is that I don't want it to creep into the SERPs over and above my acting references. I'd rather casting directors or people in my 'other' business only found my acting related links like my IMDb profile rather than blog posts.
I just need to come up with an all encompassing user name and avatar…
Mike's last blog post..I Think I Love Sarah East
Good luck. I just figured it out myself, after months.
I'm using several tactics with my niche blogs. Some I have entirely separate while others are in a subdomain of OpTempo. Some are Blogger blogs. I'm just trying to spread things out a bit.
Frank C's last blog post..Someone Please Tell Me the Secret
I hear you, Frank. I'm going to be testing the waters myself, so to speak. I've been doing a lot of research on this stuff.
RT I changed to the Red M a while back and I have to tell you , I get kind of enthused as I see it out and about the blog world, your Blue vortex will have the same effect
Making Sales Making Money's last blog post..Following the Leaders, Reaping the Rewards
I've already started using it everywhere that I can think of right now. I'm sure it'll take a while to get the brand association going and I'm patient enough. Heck, I didn't even get serious about this stuff until very recently (like January).
Yeah, from a branding perspective, it's important to keep your imagery consistent, across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and yes, your avatars.
Regarding using subdomains, I find using sub folders a quicker and better way to get a new site indexed, rather than an actual sub domain. Search engines see sub folders as an extension of the domain itself and it seems to pass authority.