Bloggone Branding
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking about branding. Mind you, it’s not that I didn’t think about it in the first place, but rather that I probably didn’t give it a thorough enough thinking through. (If you can make sense out of that, you deserve a gold star!)
I didn’t want this to be a “corporate” or business blog, but a more personal one. I like the idea of a CEO maintaining a blog to keep in touch with customers, similar to how Bob Parsons does his. But, his blog only appears to be updated on a monthly basis, making it feel less like a blog and more like an occasional letter to his customers.
So, I thought danblogs.com would be a good title for a blog. It’s short and it’s personal. So, when I saw that it was available, I snatched it up. (Yes, I registered it through GoDaddy.) And, I built the blog around the Dan Blogs name.
But, as I mentioned, I’ve been giving it some deeper thought this past week. It came up on different blogs, like Chris Bloczynski’s article: “Branding on the Web.” I think there was another blogger had a similar article, but I don’t remember who or where.
Also, I noticed in a Google search that danblogs.com had been an expired domain, meaning someone had previously registered it. Mind you, there’s nothing in the Internet Archive on it, but still it diminishes the “brand” a bit. Who had it before? Did this other Dan ever have a blog? On top of that, if you do a Google search for Dan Blogs, there are a lot of Dan’s with blogs. There are ones titled “Dan Blogs” and others titled “Dan’s Blog.”
To add to that, whenever I comment on other blogs, I comment as “Dan.” So do a lot of other Dan’s. Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell which Dan is which until you click on the blog link. And, I can’t seem to get MyBlogLog to use my uploaded picture as an avatar–I upload a picture, it shows in my login, but my profile page shows the silhouette figure and I can’t get it changed to my uploaded picture no matter what browser I use or how many times I upload a picture. Argh!
The clincher was Wednesday night. Well, actually it wasn’t the clincher, but it proved to be the turning point. Anyway, I checked out Doug’s blog.
Who’s Doug? Well, I met Doug a couple years ago on the Writers-BBS in the Science Fiction area. Early on, he reviewed one of my short stories written for a monthly writing contest on the WBBS. And, I never let him forget his comment on that story! But, I am not going to talk about that anymore, so if you want to know what happened, you’ll have to beg him for the details.
Mind you, while I do occasionally read Doug’s blog (just have to be careful as the stuff he links to isn’t always work-safe), I haven’t commented on it in a long, long time. But, I did on Wednesday. His response was this: “Dan, welcome to my blog. I’m always a little curious how newcomers find this place…”
Yep, I commented as Dan, and he didn’t know who I was. But, he eMailed me about it too, commenting that he didn’t recognize Dan, but he saw my eMail address “…and realized — it’s dcr!”
You see, back on the Writers-BBS, I was (and still am!) dcr. I am dcr on most places I join, if the name is available. It goes back to my first “vanity” eMail address from circa 1992 or so. On the local freenet, we were at first assigned user IDs. I think it was something like two or three letters and four numbers. And, they were recycled, as my ID had previously been used, and I would occasionally get eMail from people writing to their old friend. Shortly after I joined, they added the capability to have “vanity” IDs, where you could choose your ID instead of being aa1234, or whatever you were. I chose “dcr.”
Naturally, when I signed up for another BBS, I was dcr there too. And, when I set up my own BBS, I was, again, dcr.
So, when Doug sent me that eMail, that’s when it hit me. I already have a brand. I’m not Dan (well, I am but…), I am dcr! It was then that I began thinking about changing the name of the blog.
I kept thinking about it, and was so excited about the prospect, I had to get up out of bed at 3:00 a.m., boot up the computer and see if dcrblogs.com was available. It was, and I registered it.
So, the project for Thursday night was changing the name. First, I had to decide between “DCR” and “dcr.” I dislike using lower case letters for names or initials. We capitalize names as a way of showing respect. So, not capitalizing them is disrespectful. I prefer capitalization.
On the other hand, because, way back when, lower case was the norm for eMail addresses, I have always been a lower case dcr. This still being the Internet, I suppose lower case wouldn’t be so bad.
What made the decision, however, was DC Blogs. That’s the closest URL to dcrblogs.com, so I figured I don’t want to be like them. So, I figured that if they were “dc Blogs” then I would be “DCR Blogs.” Likewise, if they were “DC Blogs” then I would be “dcr Blogs.” In case it’s not immediately obvious, they are “DC Blogs.” That resolved that issue!
I created the new logo. Next, I went to work on getting the rest of the site changed. I didn’t think it would be too hard.
To make a long story short, when I went to bed Thursday night at 2:30 a.m., my blog was an error page, and I now appear on Technorati as “WordPress > Error.”
You see, as I was changing things, the hard drive on the server that hosts my blog decided to go on a little trip South. So, things weren’t working and, until the hard drive completely went nuts, wacky things were happening that I thought were my doing as I was trying to make the switch.
So, I will probably lose my Authority of 4 in Technorati and have to start all over with dcrBlogs.com. At least the blog is still young so it’s not as damaging as it might have been. That assumes I do have everything configured properly now!
Back to branding… A positive with dcr Blogs is that there aren’t as many DCR Blogs as there are Dan Blogs. Right now, the #1 result on a Google search for “dcr blogs” is the Davis College Republicans, but I’ll knock them out of that spot soon enough.
On a final note, welcome to dcr Blogs! I’m your host, dcr!
Fortunately, I’ve been plastering the ‘net with my name for such a long time, I come up 4th and 6th on a simple google of my full name (Douglas Hoffman). Not bad for a not-too-uncommon name. As for “walnut,” as you might imagine, there are lots of walnuts out there. Even lots of “walnut blog” links that aren’t me. But if I google “walnut sex blog,” Balls and Walnuts is right on top! Go figure.
You’ll have to remind me about my crit, Dan. I was mean, wasn’t I? I can be a total sh!t of a critter sometimes.
As I recall, I think you only really liked one of my stories. I don’t remember which story, but I’m reasonably certain I did print out your comment and stick it in the story’s file.
Anyway, as per the particular story I am referring, I can’t believe you don’t remember, especially after the number of times I continued to remind you of it thereafter. It’s the one where I snuck in the twist in the very last one or two lines, and you–ahem–missed it.
I think I printed that comment out too.
Nice idea Dan
I am not sure about Technorati but Google will give back all the SERPs you had on danblogs.
You may give Technorati a buzz and tell them what happened to reinstated your authority.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll contact Technorati and see what happens.
I read through the Technorati FAQ, and it looks like nothing can be done.
But, as of right now, I’m up to an Authority of 5 for dcrBlogs, so it didn’t take me long to bounce back!
It shouldn’t be to difficult to get number 1 for that search term. That site has 8 pages I can find on google.
[...] remember when I rebranded my blog, I was worried when I would build my Technorati rank back up to 4! It took me so long to get that [...]