SmallFishBigMoney.Com

When you land on my blog…what is the first thing you see a lot of? Fish. Yes, my blog is called Small Fish Big Money for a reason you know, I picked it because it is good from both a branding aspect and a colour scheme aspect. But I picked it because it was something that people can easily remember. When you leave the site today, I am pretty sure that more than 80% of the people leaving, will remember the name of the site, or at least, a few words relating to the site.

1. Branding, An Essential Part Of Blogging

It does not matter if people tell you, your advertising is not good enough…Most of the time it comes down to brand recognition. If you don’t have one…you are automatically telling me not remember you or your blog without even knowing it. I was listening to a highly interesting podcast with Nate Whitehill and Alvin Phang recently, it discussed the psychological impacts of your blog design on people, but more importantly it discussed why having a brand is quintessential. Find the podcast here: Alvin Phang and Nate Whitehill Talk Web Design

2. I Will Forget Your Blog If…

You are using a generic theme, you don’t have a logo, you don’t have a custom header, you have ads all over the place (it’s a visual thing). Nate hit the nail on the head with this one and I have always believed that it is true, it is common sense after all, the fact of the matter is that a generic theme equals less point of recollection for the person reading your blog. There are many generic themes out there that are immensely popular, and I see them being used by many bloggers. But do you know what happens to those kind of blogs…? I forget them within 10 seconds of leaving their site!

3. That’s A Fact, And It Does Not Stop There

There is a much, much higher likelihood of me, reading your content – if you have a creative blog that is both informative and pleasing to look at. Nate also talked about the impact that certain colours have on people. This is why you should not be using high impact yellows, reds and greens. Try using blended tones of those colours, like light red, light yellow and light green.

4. Using Both A Unique and Uniform Avatar/Display Picture

I cannot stress this one enough! By using a unique avatar (display picture) at all your active social networking sites you are branding yourself one step further. What are the most poignant avatars I have seen…Let’s see, John Chow, Elizabeth Cooksey, Small Fish Big Money, Nate Whitehill and Slyvisions. Why are those ones so effective? They are effective because…you can see the avatars again on their sites, you can see them at places like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog etc…All of this and the fact that that they are simple allows me to remember them again and again.

5. It’s All About Trying To Get People To Remember Your Site

This is one of the key points about branding, it is not about making a picture you like the look of. It is about creating a unique and identifiable image that will stick inside someone’s head, that also looks quite good at the same time. The image has to be so good that it makes the person come back to your site because they say, oh yeah I remember that site, let’s check out what’s happening over there! If you can get that to happen, you are one step closer to successful branding.

Tags: blog theme, branding, ejcooksey, johnchow, johntp, wordpress, wordpress-theme