flash media gallery
June 19, 2008
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Whether you want to showcase your own media, create lightboxes for your internet favourites or use video advertising for revenue generation, Brand-Forge.com will find the right solution to meet your needs. Contact us today for pricing options:
Personal online brand-building roadmap
June 17, 2008
Getting started with building your own personal online brand can seem like a tough challenge: bewildering lists of new concepts, complicated technology, complex terms and new skills to be learned. For most of us out there, we stand little chance of working it all out on our own to build a successful online brand, a platform for getting our ideas out there and, who knows, maybe even one day earning and income from it all…
The good news is that Brand-Forge.com are here to provide you with the link between your technical capabilities and your goals. We offer a total online brand-building service from the ground up for those who need it, and a low-cost, high-spec hosting & WordPress web publishing service for advanced users who just need the tools - and any variation in between.
As part of our vision to demystify online brand-building, blogging, search engine positioning and web development in general, Brand-Forge.com are publishing a weekly series of articles called “the Personal online brand-building roadmap”. Mostly this is designed for beginners but we’re sure there will be something in it for everyone - in this game, you should never stop learning!
Sphere: Related ContentOnline brand-building for bands & musicians
June 13, 2008
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| Brand-Forge.com combines easy-to-use tools, based on the award-winning WordPress publishing suite, a complete hosting service and design services to help you take your online music promotion to the next level. Our service is based on trusted technology providing you with a cost-effective solution for online branding, reclaiming your online identity from sites like MySpace & YouTube and creating a personalised focus, integrated with your online profiles. |
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| Hosting services from £3 per month Design/creation packages from £250 one-off |
Update services from £6 per hour Support is always free |
| We pride ourselves on our professionalism and results but don’t take our word for it, listen to your customers: “My website & MySpace profile were designed and built by Brand-Forge.com and I cannot say enough positive things about them. I was especially impressed by their attention to detail and concern for what their clients are looking for. They maintained a constant line of communication, providing me with not only what I had initially asked them to do, but above and beyond what I was expecting from them. I wouldn’t think twice before recommending them to colleagues and friends.” |
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| Natasha Panas, singer, songwriter, soul artist. | www.natashapanasmusic.com www.myspace.com/natashapanas |
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Ads? Try Content
May 26, 2008
Interesting post about how advertising is on the way out. People are finding new ways to disable, ignore, or avoid advertising. The future of advertising is in content/blogs/etc
Choosing a Domain
May 22, 2008
Choosing a domain name may seem straight forward, but there are several important factors that should be considered - and not all of them are obvious.
How to Choose a Niche Topic for Your Blog
April 26, 2008
@jonathanguinn asks: “I am new to internet marketing and am struggling to find my niche. Maybe some pointers about that would be helpful.”
There are many factors to consider when choosing a niche. I’ve written about many of them in this post - but for me a lot of it comes back to choosing something that you know about, that you feel you can say something useful and interesting on - ie what are YOU about?.
After that I’d take a good hard look at tools like Google Trends where you can track the popularity of different search terms over time to see if they’ve been trending up or down. Ideally you want to find a popular niche that’s growing so that you can position yourself for the future growth.
Other factors of course come into play including the number of other blogs and websites on a topic already (ie competition), whether the topic has monetization streams (if you’re doing it for money) etc - but you can read more aobut them in my post on choosing a niche for your blog.
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When Self Promotion Tips into Spam
April 26, 2008
@jimgoldstein asks: “one things I see bloggers struggle with is blog spam. When self promotion goes to far. “
I agree Jim. There are different kinds of spam - the main stuff we see is the auto-generated stuff that fills our inboxes and hits our comment filters but then there is a more subtle kind of spam - where bloggers overstep the mark on other people’s blogs by promoting themselves to a point where they put others off. I see this every day in the comments on my blogs where the comments left are five words long and only slightly on topic and then there’s a list of 2-3 links as a signature. The comments left are obviously a thinly veiled attempt at self promotion.
The problem with this approach of self promotion is that you can do more harm for yourself than good. If you comments are allowed on your blog the reaction from others who see it can actually hurt your brand. I write about this in 10 Way s to Hurt Your Blog’s Brand by Commenting on Other Blogs.
The key to growing your blog is to create value. Create useful and unique content on your own blog (don’t get caught up in the self promotion game in every 2nd post) and to do the same thing on other people’s blogs. The people’s blogs that I visit from comments on my blog (and others) are those who have something interesting and useful to say - not those who leave links on dull and spammy comments).
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How to Build Community on Your Blog
April 25, 2008
@SmallFishMedia asks - “What can you do to make your blog more of a community?”
There are many things that you can do to build a sense of community on a blog. Here’s a short list of ideas that come to mind:
- Take the lead and be the community that you want your readers to be - readers follow the lead of bloggers in how they’ll interact with each other
- Ask Questions - the key to more comments and interaction on a blog
- Give readers homework - try it, it works
- Give readers a job to do on your blog - bizarre but it works
- Link to reader’s blogs - it’s amazing what impact this can have
- Answer Reader questions - this has real power
- Invite Readers to Take the lead with guest posts, giving advice to each other etc
- Make Readers Famous - celebrate your readers publicly
- Do projects where readers can participate, submit things and be active. The more you have them DO the more loyal they’ll become.
Blog Design - Does it Matter?
April 25, 2008
@mattpacker asks - how important is the design of your blog and how hard a decision do you think it would be to develop a new theme for it?
There will probably be a little debate over this one in the comments on this post because every time I see someone write about design there are two opposing arguments.
On the one side are some blogger who argue that design is secondary and not that important as that it’s content that is what draws people to a blog and keeps them there. This camp often argues that with a lot of people reading blogs these days through RSS that design is less important as people rarely see it.
On the flip side we have the argument that design is very important because it creates a first impression in the mind of potential readers and that it’s around this first impression that many readers base their decision about whether they will subscribe.
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How to Build Your Blog’s Readership
April 25, 2008
@jeremyjacks asks - How did you get to be a big blogger? And what should I do to get more site hits?” also - @JoshAnstey asks - “whats the best way to build blog exposure?”
I’m not sure I’m famous outside of a very small segment of the internet - but the growth I’ve had on my blogs has come over a long period of time and I would say that one of the ’secrets’ to growing a blog readership is to stick at it and work hard for a sustained period of time. I’ve been blogging 5 and a half years now and have worked a lot of hours in that time.
Outside of hard work (and a bit of luck) there are many techniques you can use to grow readership to a blog. I’ve summarised some of the many articles I’ve written on the topic here on my How to Find Readers for your Blog page. Also check out my 6 part series on How I’d Promote My Blog if I was Starting Out Again. I really believe that the topics covered in that of guest posting (on relevant blogs in your niche), networking, viral content, advertising and social media are a great place to start.
Also - get on Twitter (I know you’re on it Jeremy and Josh but others should) because it’s a pretty hot spot at the moment when it comes on online activity and I think the potential to drive a lot of traffic from there is still only just being realized. It’s a space that is still in it’s early days of development so get in early (even though it’s been a year or two since it launched) and position yourself for the future.
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