Category Archives: Branding

Branding David: Consulting and Speaking

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Over the last few months, I have been fortunate enough to speak at two different events, and in doing so, I only increased my interest in speaking, training, consulting and teaching and so I have decided to build out a new blog called Branding David.

This blog won’t change, and will continue to talk about blogging, and building out blogs, advertising and podcasting, but on Branding David, I will talk about owning a small business, working for others, consulting, speaking at conferences and events, as well as other things that I have been interested in writing about, and never had a platform to do so.

If you enjoy this blog, I hope you will check out Branding David and let me know what you think of it.

Some posts that I have already written that people seem to enjoy include:

Originally posted on October 13, 2008 @ 2:59 pm

Lesson Learned: Keep One Consistent Home

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One of the biggest lessons that I learned over the past month is that I should really keep one consistent home on the web, and having not done so over the last three years has been to my career and personal branding efforts detriment.

I have moved from site to site, from place to place, and from company to company, and while many people know me rather intimately, in the more general sense, I am relatively unknown.

Attending Blog World Expo, I assumed a few people would know me outside of my normal social circles but that really wasn’t the case. Some people knew the sites I had written on, but most people didn’t know me by name.

If you want to do well online, it is smart to create one place where people can always find you, even if you are working as a blogger for other companies or blog networks. Don’t do as I’ve done and move from place to place or it can become difficult to remember who you are.

Hopefully, over time, I will be able to rectify this error on my part through continued brand building in a wider variety of mediums as those that were doing video podcasts were the most recognized, second came those that did a variety of audio podcasts, and third came us primarily text-only bloggers. So if you want to be recognized, a second tip would be to get your face and voice out on the web as much as possible.

Originally posted on September 28, 2008 @ 11:18 pm

Follow Up on The Design Critique

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For those of you that keep a keen eye on this blog, you might have noticed a post about critiquing this blog over on Blogging Tips.

There were some amazing comments, including an analysis by Kevin Muldoon, Blogging Tips owner, and I feel really humbled by those that chose to participate.

Kevin drew a little flack from coming up with a set of criteria for entry, but I think that he handled it well, and I look forward to seeing which other blogs get put under the magnifying glass.

The biggest tip for this blog was to work on scaling back advertising, which I have already started, and work on moving items around to give the site a better flow. Many people seemed to enjoy the content, as well as the branding, but overall it seemed like there were many things people thought could be done better.

It is very humbling to have people put their opinion out there, and while I am still digesting some of what they said, I am definitely thinking about hunting down a great designer to take my current branding and help me take the design of this site to the next level. Don’t get me wrong, DesignDisease is absolutely amazing, and I will probably contact them first, but I think this site is ready for another slight design shift.

Originally posted on September 2, 2008 @ 9:45 pm

College Crunch: My New Job

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So many people have been asking me what my new job is, and it really hasn’t been ready to talk about, but today I wanted to cover a bit about the project, and so I have to talk directly about it. So, for all of you wondering what site I am working on, you can find me over at College Crunch, where I am today working on The College Crunch Gazette, a blog that will focus on getting a university degree.

To run this site, and its blog, I have needed to add two dozen plugins to the WordPress installation, and while we are still waiting on the custom design to take advantage of some of these plugins, I have already started producing content for the site.

This will be the largest single site I have ever worked on. For comparison’s sake, I have created over five hundred posts on this blog over the last year, and the required content pages alone will come to more than half that amount, with the blog building out a content index of around five hundred posts in the next six to eight months or so.

The amount of research I have to do for this topic is also immense, as I learn the differences between the American and Canadian educational systems, as well as their relationship for those grabbing their education across country borders.

Starting a new blog from scratch is something I haven’t done very often, as I only took over Blogging Pro, and Forever Geek as well as being a single contributor on many multi-author blogs.

I am very excited about the challenge and hope that you will all check out The College Crunch Gazette, leave comments, and ping me if you have any post-secondary stories you would love to share.

Originally posted on August 25, 2008 @ 2:18 pm

Blogs Being Used to Shed Light on Private Issues

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It seems to me lately that a trend that I am sure started a long time ago has been growing as of late, with many high level blogs using their sites as a way to bring to light issues that should be handled privately.

The latest example is on TechCrunch, a blog that some people loath, and other laud with a post about plagarism, entitled “DEMO v. TechCrunch50 Takes A Nasty Turn With Charges Of Plagiarism” where Michael Arrington airs his dirty laundry in hopes of making DEMO look bad.

I find such posts uncalled for and I hope they become extremely unpopular as such issues should be held in private, rather than becoming a contest of “who has the biggest audience”.

Are we, as a blog reading audience so interested in controversy and gossip that these types of posts bring in a high level of traffic, provoking site owners to continue to publish such information?

I really wish people would stop using their blogs as a way to blow private issues out of proportion. Sensationalism can be a great tool, but it can also taint the overall brand of a site, and I know quite a few people that would consider TechCrunch to be a tainted brand.

Respect is a two way street, and by publishing such articles, you are only displaying a lack of respect that is all too common in the blogosphere currently.

Am I wrong? Let me know in the comments below.

Originally posted on August 11, 2008 @ 5:38 pm