A Very Active Day

Yesterday was the most active day since Blogger Lounge was launched, just in terms of traffic, my Histats account registered more than 1,000 unique visitors, well in fact the day ended with exactly 1,073 uv’s and 1954 page views, this is really great, The Lounge is only one month and seven days old. This achievement was in part because my promotional campaign of Blog Relations, and other strategies I applied, I’m going to tell you which ones later. My Technorati Rank also increased (or decreased) to 25,967.

Comment.Zation V1, Win a Free Logo Design!

Today we start our Comment.Zation week as part of the Top Blog Branding Series!, Blogger Lounge is now receiving a very interesting amount of traffic, but very few readers actually leave a comment, that’s why I decided to launch the first contest of this blog. I’ve installed a plugin that will register and show the top commentators of this blog, this will also give you a backlink.

The Contest

During this week write as many comments as you can, share your opinions, ideas and thoughts with us about the posts in this blog, but please write good comments, only high quality, relevant and useful comments will be approved, there are some old post where comments are closed. The one that comments the most will be presented as the winner of this contest. The deadline date is next Tuesday, so hurry up, it only takes less than two minutes to write a good comment.

What’s the prize?

Well first of all, if you are one of the top commentators, you’ll receive a backlink, but the winner will get an amazing free logo design for his/her blog, designed of course by me. A good logo design can cost you up to $1,000, so this is a really good deal, you just have to comment, that’s it. Additional to that, the winner will also receive a permanent backlink from this blog because hi/her name along with the name of the blog will be published in a post.

What are you waiting for? all I’m asking for are your comments. Just visit our archives and start sharing with us. “”I grow, you grow” right Santosh?! Bring it on bloggers! who starts?! Oh!, …and spread the word!

Essential Branding Elements of a Blog

This is the second article of our Top Blog Branding Series, this time I’m going to show you the essential elements of blog branding. These small but important details give your blog a different and unique look. Sites without this tiny details will get lost in the immense blogosphere. Believe it or not there are thousands of blogs out there without a proper signage, these makes them common and boring. Ok, now let’s take a look to these essential elements, make sure your blog has them, if not hurry up and add them right away.

• Logo .- This is maybe the first thing a person sees when visits your blog. It should be unique and attractive, if the reader sees that you have a good logo, he will know that you care for your blog and that you’ll offer quality in everything, at least that’ll be the first impression. As I said in previous posts, it is not enough just to have the title of your blog at the top of the page.
• Favicon .- You may think that favicons are not important for a blog or website, but they are. It is an element that will add another unique detail. Check the blogs in the Technorati Top 100, they all hay favicons.

• Buttons and Graphic details .- I’m talking about images, and special buttons inside your blog, take a look to the envelop I have in my sidebar, as you can see is glossy and it has the initials of my blog, some of these elements should be custom made, or at least attractive, dare to be different.

• Unique Theme design .- Your blog can have a unique and creative look even if you are using a common theme, just try to make some changes, like the background or the color of the links, try to make them match with the colors in your logo.

• Color Scheme .- As I said in the paragraph above, match the colors of all your branding elements, the ideal number of color identity for a business is 3 , as you can see my blog corporate colors are orange, beige and black. See how the links are orange too.

That’s it , remember to play a little with all the above elements until you find the perfect combination.

WordPress Theme. Tarento 1.0!

This is my third theme for WordPress, based on the amazing work of Adam Walker Cleaveland. Cleaker 2.1 As you remember, I few days ago I released the Lavrentis 1.0 theme, which is very popular, in fact, it currently has been downloaded up to 480 times. This time I designed a similar one, with a fresh, modern and sophisticated touch, Tarento 1.0 my second theme for public release.

Tarento is a 3 column, “widget ready” theme, it works fine with all browsers. This nice looking design has some eye catching elements like the rss button and the little icons at the top. This design gives a special and clean image to any blog, try it, and let me know what you think.

A Few Words About Blog Branding

This the first post of the Top Blog Branding Series I’ve published other articles related to blog branding, but in theory this is going to be the first one of this collection. What do you know about blog branding? Do you think blog branding is important? If you think that branding is not important in a blog or website, you can quit right now to your blogging adventure, because I’m talking about something that really makes a difference when it comes to success and money. Ok first of all let’s define what branding is.

Branding

A very simple definition says that it is the process by which both a brand and brand identity are developed. It is also a relationship between customers, in this case readers and subscribers with the brand. But that’s not all, symbols, colors, design and the whole environment inside a blog determines the brand of the site.

Blog Brand

It is composed by the name of the site, the domain name the logo or symbols that are associated and form the identity of that blog, the design and layout and even the style of the posts. The design and style of the images and ads is also counted as part of the brand.

Logo

This is one of the most important elements of branding, because it’s going to become the image of your blog or business, it is not enought just to have the title at the top of your site, some colors here and some colors there, you need something more, you need a real image, something that communicates what your sites is about and that reflects the main values of your blog. Logos don’t have to very complex , simplicity rules, the simpler your logo is the better it will be for your brand. Take a look at the logo of this blog, it is simple but very effective. Just by adding this elemet the entire enviroment and look of my site improves.

Remember that there’s no business without identity, and since blogging is also a business, it needs an identity, my advice to you is, start thinking in your blog as a brand too, even if it has your name. Brand it!

Best of The Best 1

It’s time to check more great posts from great blogs, Since I announced our backlinking program I’ve been receiving a lot of reviews and mentions about some of the posts in this blog, thanks to all of you. That’s why I decided to call this feature “Best of the Best” because that’s what it is, I’ll select one of the best posts of each blog that links back to Blogger Lounge. Here are the first links of this first edition, these are really good articles.

Maria has a very interesting blog with a lot of good information for bloggers, in fact, I must say it was a little difficult fro me to choose one post because I found a lot of good ones, the one I liked the most is called “How to manage your blogging business” because it has some interesting advices about blog management. It might be useful if you are a new blogger.

Dwayne wrote a brief but interesting post that really caught my attention because it’s true, the title is simple: “Have fun while blogging” basically he explains that currently there are thousands of blogs out there explaining the same thing, SEO, Money making tips and all that, int his post he says that there is also a very important element that makes a blog successful and it is to have fun. We must have that in mind.

Adam is a frequent reader of this blog, and he has also very nice posts in his own blog, one of them is “How not to run a contest“, it’s very easy for many bloggers to run a contest, but most of them will fail. Adam explains us from his own experience what not to do when you run a contest, these are tips you have to have in mind before starting a competition in your blog.

BlogBait is a great blog, it is in fact a different kind of blog, with a very nice concept. The owner of this site is the guy in the previous paragraph ; ), Adam. in few words, BlogBait is a compilation of current backlinking programs. As he says, it is a directory that offers ink bait promotions and contests. Good work Adam!

David has a blog about many topics, from Mac to WordPress and from business to programming it also has a particular thing, he frequently publishes some link exchange programs he founds out there, so I think it is another blog you must see. It worths it.

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