Case Studies | Personal branding | Brand Journalism | Best Practices | Corporate blogging
Twelve years ago, I left the corporate world to go independent and live by my wits. And ten years ago I started writing my blog.
I made two decisions at the time I wish I hadn’t. I branded myself as a business called Freshspot Marketing and I named my blog Web Ink Now.
Rather than using my name David Meerman Scott, I branded other things. These were errors because the names Freshspot Marketing and Web Ink Now didn’t mean much and have been confusing.
Fortunately, the web is iterative and you make changes over time.
New blog masthead
Yesterday I rolled out a new blog masthead to focus on my name David Meerman Scott rather than the blog name Web Ink Now. I also started using “Marketing and Sales Strategies” instead of “Marketing and Leadership Strategies” because sales better describes what I talk about on my blog and in my books and speeches. You can see before and after below.
I worked with my long time designer Doug Eymer on this. We also changed the header to the email updates to my blog distributed through FeedBlitz. If you subscribe via FeedBlitz you’ve already seen this change. (If you would like my blog updates via email, you can sign up on the FeedBlitz form at the right of my blog below my photo.)
Your personal brand
If you are selling your services, you should figure out if you want to brand your own name so people know you for your expertise or if you want to brand a company name instead. I wrote about this important distinction last year in a post called A company or a guru?
I started with the wrong approach and it has taken me a decade to figure that out and unwind parts of it.
No right or wrong answer
Independents have a fundamental choice: Should you brand your name or a company name? Either approach can succeed. However, people who don’t make the choice are positioning themselves somewhere in the middle and that can pose branding problems.
My blog before
My blog now
