YouShouldKnow.com

If you haven’t realized it yet, building an online brand is becoming more and more critical. During my online travels, I see webmasters building fancy and compelling designs in order to captivate surfers and build a lasting brand. Are they succeeding? Well let’s look at few aspects of online brand building before we dive into what is perhaps the most underutilized branding method today.

The first thing I would like to address is what I call “on-site brand building”, this is where webmasters and designers incorporate the actual brand into their page. Here we are talking about logos, tag lines and color schemes. Let’s take a look at a popular brand that most of us would recognize: Google.

Their on-site branding is exceptional. You can find their eight letter name splattered literally on all their search pages as well as many of the pages that host some of their other service offerings such as Google Images, Google Video, Google News, Google Maps and many other Google product offerings.

Now let’s look at something I call “off-site brand building”, this is where other webmasters and designers incorporate someone else’s brand into their website. This can take on the style of many different shapes and flavors. Typically, if we use Google as the example, webmasters will link to Google using a Google image or text link, they’ll blog about Google very much like I am doing here and use some imagery, or they will even incorporate a service such as Google Search into their own site; here’s how AOL Search is doing it:

See how Google has managed to be front and center of the AOL search. Think for one second what the branding reach this venture with AOL is having on Google brand recognition. Quiet amazing isn’t it? But do remember “off-site brand building” can become a very expensive and immense undertaking, but executed correctly can yield some tremendous results.

Alright, so we have honed in on “on-site” and “off-site” brand building and hopefully everyone understands these basic concepts. Before I give my last and most underused method to building an online brand, let me diverse a little so that I can share something with you. Successful online brand building, can also occur and be enhanced, using strategies outside of the digital realm. We are talking about here are traditional methods such as branded key fobs, pens and mugs. Google is so in tune with every aspect of their branding, that one could say that they get a little extreme. Here is a sample of thinking out of the box and going the extra mile, introducing the Google mini-fridge.

Okay the last thing I am going to address is perhaps the most underutilized brand building method online today. At last count, 97% of the sites I have visited and bookmarked are not even touching this method. This method is just one strategy withing something I have coined “passive digital branding”. I call it “passive digital branding” because once you have set one of these strategies into action, you can simply forget about it and it will continue working for you. The method of branding I am about to explain is passive, unobtrusive and effective. It can be used very successfully. Let me explain by using the following mini-graphics to illustrate the power of this branding startegy. Can you recognize all these brands?

Search Engines and Online Brands

Sports Association Brands

Airline Company Brands

These mini-graphics are called “Favicons”, and these little critters are displayed on your browser address bar, available tabs and most importantly your bookmarked entries. If designed and created correctly, including Favicons in your branding initiative will yield nothing but good results. Here’s a quick glance at what Wikipedia’s Favicon looks like in your browsers address bar, tabs and bookmarks.

Note: In Mozilla Firefox, favicons are displayed in all available tabs, the bookmark toolbar/menu and the location bar.

Note: In Internet Explorer 7, favicons are displayed in all available tabs, the addressbar, and the Favorites menu.

Hopefully you can now see the importance of having “Favicon”. Yes? Can you believe that there are very few websites using this? (this blog included, but thats because I have not decided on my brand yet). Getting this setup for your website is as easy as making your Favicon graphic and uploading to the main / root directory of your site. I could continue discussing methods of creating Favicons and what they are but that would mean an even lengthier post.

However I am going to provide you with two fantastic resources so that you can learn about Favicons.

1. Information on Favicons at Wikipedia

2. Here is a FREE tool for creating Favicons

Now get at it and start buidling your brand. Good Luck and Have Fun!

Share This