You’re starting a company that sells lederhosen online. They are top quality lederhosen and you offer them at a reasonable price. What is it that is going to set you apart from the other websites that sell lederhosen? What is special about your offering? What is unique? These are things you should consider from day one: Before you build your website. Before you so much as have a business card made or choose the name of your company.

Every detail, major and minor, plays a part in defining the answer to the question of what it is that sets you apart: your brand. When people think of you they will create a collective image in their minds made up of reactions they have had on both conscious and subconscious levels to everything from the name of your company to the colors and fonts you choose to use on your website.

If you don’t take your companies brand into consideration right away, it can be detrimental. It’s a lot easier to create an image where there is none than it is to change one once it has already been made. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, “You can’t unring a bell.”.

Here are five questions that will help you start to piece together your companies brand:

1. If you had to define your brand with three keywords, what would they be? Think of it in terms of #hashtags on Twitter or tags in a blog post.
   
2. What is the demographic you are focused on reaching? Who is your audience? Consider their age, their income, their pop culture references, their political and social views, etc.
3. Who is your biggest competitor? What can you learn from their branding strategy? What was effective for them? What was damaging?
4. If your brand was a pictorial centerfold, what would it look like? Thinking about this will force you to consider visual imagery which will help when you are creating your logo and website.
5. Where do you see your company in 5 years? 10 years? Your brands message should be able to stand the test of time, and the choices you make now will act as a foundation to build the future of your company upon.

Even if you have already launched your venture, it is never too late to reconsider your brand. Altering the public perception can be challenging, but it is never too late. Don’t just accept the brand you have, dictate the brand you want.

Before you know it, all the cool kids will be wearing your lederhosen.

Dear Tumblr,

It’s time that I just come out and say it. For all of the world to hear me shouting it from the pixelated rooftops. I love you! I love you and I will never leave you. Ever. When I first laid eyes on you back in January of 2008, I just knew we were meant to be together. Since, I’ve shared my life with you in so many ways. After all this time together, we still spend quality time nearly every day. You just make me want to give more, and more again.

I know you know that I… blog… in a lot of other places. Look, we never said this was exclusive and we both know I know about your millions of “users”. I just want you to know that what we have is special. It’s always you I turn to, not out of obligation, but out of love… to share the most authentic pieces of myself. Others might be more powerful, more complex… but with you it’s just: different.

You make me wish I were a developer so I could make you little trinkets of affection. When I’m with you, you ask so little effort from me. Even my friends like you. I encourage the ones who “don’t get blogging” to give you a roll in the sack because not only are you easy (sorry, but it’s true and everyone knows), but you introduce them to other “like minded individuals” to share their time with… A pretty cool bunch of people. It’s good when your friends can get along. Even some of my clients who are so hopeless that they couldn’t be expected to handle WordPress in even the most rudimentary context, can figure out how to make friends with your intuitive interface. Just another reason I am grateful that you are always so accommodating to my needs, allowing me to mold you to fit in with the rest of a design. (Admit it, CSS is the glue that holds us together…) Every time you update something, it’s new all over again. (I’m going to look past the whole “Tumblarity” thing and forgive and forget about the blogs you deleted… you made it right: and that took balls. I respect balls… and hey, no one and nothing is perfect. We’ve learned from our mistakes.)

I’ve made 3,449 posts (including this one), “liked” 707 posts, and made 1,296 new friends. With the passing of time you are like a fine wine, improving with age.

Happy Anniversary, love. To many more… la chaim!

True Love Forever & Always,

Affectionately Yours,

xoxo

Alana Joy

PS: You can buy the above logo on a t-shirt here for $15, and that’s not even a lot.

While you’re busy working on those resolutions you made in attempts to be a better you, don’t forget to keep your websites at their best too! Staying on top of design trends is important because a dated looking website works against you and not for you. A website that incorporates the latest trends in design and function shows that your brand remains on the pulse of what’s new, and who doesn’t want that? Following are some trends that will keep your site fresh and modern in the new year!

Single Page Layouts:

We’ve all heard, “K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple Stupid”… Single page layouts are all about simplicity. Your readers can click the links in your navigation and view the new information in the same page. No waiting for new pages to load! Excellent for personal pages, online “business cards”… with a bit of creativity (and umm, JQuery) anything is possible!

Oversided Headers:

Designers are taking advantage of the header to make the first impression splash pages used to make. Visitors to your site don’t want to sit through an intro or have to click something to access information from the landing page. Use it as a branding opportunity! Let it take up as much as the entire screen and don’t be afraid to get creative!

Enhanced Footers:

Footers used to be restricted to copyright and contact information, or secondary navigation. Moving forward you’ll see the footer becoming a more significant part of page design, featuring aspects that have usually been found in the sidebar: this is a great place to feature all your social networking streams, like from Twitter or Flickr.

Lightboxes:

Rather than the annoying popup windows that distract the visitor from whatever they were looking at, lightboxes open in the current window and are excellent for featuring information. I like using lightboxes to display media such as images or video, but using Javascript there are really few limitations to what can be displayed in a lightbox window (login or contact forms, maps… think outside the box!). When featuring images or video, you should darken the background so that the visitor is less distracted by what’s underneath making the viewing experience more pleasant.

Get Sketchy:

Add a bit of whimsy to your design using handwriting fonts and graphic elements that resemble doodles and sketches. By no means is this a brand new trend, but you will see page designs using this in more creative ways! Touches of these hand drawn aspects add authenticity to your aesthetic. On a corporate site, this can mean, for example, using a handwriting font on a post-it graphic somewhere to draw attention to something you would like to feature (such as “Don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter!”) or making it appear that “notes” have been jotted into the margins. On my lifestyle website, CoutureCult.com, I’ve used both hand drawn images in the header and a font that looks like it was doodled, along with a few other “sketched” details throughout the design of the site to pull it all together.

You’ll notice I added simple hand drawn decoration on either side of the ads that are in the header and footer of CoutureCult.com. This integrates the ads into the page design in a way that is more cohesive, making them feel that they are part of the design and not working against the design.

Typography:

Typography is an art in and of itself, and we are seeing web designers start to experiment with using fonts in different weights and sizes, as well as using more than one font together that compliment each other. A good designer will understand how to implement creative typography in a way that is both consistent and eye catching. The outcome can be either sleek and modern or fun and interesting: depending largely on the fonts chosen, the colors used, and how and where it is implemented in the overall design.

Social Media Icons and Sharing:

Moving into the new decade, there is no site that is complete without connecting your reader to the rest of your relevant social networking accounts and giving them the opportunity to share the information on your site in as many places as possible with ease. With social media icons you can, in the simplest of ways, provide a map to your range of destinations online without utilizing much of your treasured page real estate. Similarly, there are now countless ways to provide the opportunity for your reader to share your website, your blog post, your images… with one click! The reader can share a blog post, for example, on practically any social media platform: Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg… oh yes, and email. More of a requirement than a trend, but this post wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the importance of social media sharing.

I find myself acutely observant of the way various high profile Twitter personalities approach their use of the platform. Insight into their personal styles and why they have chosen to go about things the way they do allows me the opportunity to learn from those who have a proven track record in a way that no conference, camp, or meetup can. In many cases they honestly know a thing or two I don’t and no matter how knowledgeable or successful you are in your field, there is always something to be learned from those who are where you would like to be. Sometimes however, when you are the one in that place, there is something to be learned from those who are where you once were.

link link RTlink @reply @reply-inside-joke link @reply RTlink @reply…

So, we already know who you are because we’ve seen you or heard of you somewhere else. We follow you because we are expecting some kind of insight from you that we can’t get anywhere else. Yet when you interact it’s mainly with people you already know, and it’s only funny or interesting to the two of you. Hardly ever do you interact or publicly reply to those you don’t know. You tweet your own links, you tweet your friends links, you tweet your companies links. Seldom do you add something to the conversations going on in your stream, rarely do you interject things you have not already said elsewhere.

If you’re in the industry and so am I, odds are that I already follow Mashable, TechCrunch et al. and I don’t need a “best of” from 75% of the people I follow. Ask yourself what is unique about your stream and what nuggets you are sharing that make following you valuable to those who are actually using Twitter.. We all know just how much/little our follower count means: especially for those who know how to build that amount. It’s the ones who are interested, interacting, and responsive that are valuable to us: not the 185,853 Donald Trump MLM accounts, 54,848 porn accounts, and 12,437 abandoned accounts that make up your numbers.

If you are going to mostly post links at least go digging around for interesting and unique links that haven’t already passed through my stream countless times. Or add an interesting tidbit about your perspective on the link when you retweet it, if a heavily retweeted link is that relevant to your stream.

Though you might not be attending to your account with the same fervor as those of us in the trenches, there is definitely something to be said for those who show their followers that they are paying attention and taking in what is being said. Someone who is excellent at this is @GaryVee. He is responsive to those who attempt to interact with him, he reaches out to those who reference him: and it turns his followers into fans… into customers.

Promotion is a huge part of why we are all here, but if I’m sitting through your propaganda (as I ask those who follow me to sit through my own), show a bit of your personality as well. If you are a “personality” then I assume you must have one. Show it! Post an unrelated link once in a while. Tell a joke. Share your thoughts on a movie you recently saw or a book you read. What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Though too much of this can be tiring, a taste of it here and there makes those who follow you feel that they know you a little better. The more we relate to you the more we trust what you have to say.

Some people have streams that are consistently either always positive and optimistic or always negative and pessimistic. Quite possibly, that is part of your “personal brand” but real people are made up of varying shades of gray. Behind every personal brand is… ready for it? A PERSON. If all you do is gripe, complain, or rant… that grows tiring after a while. If every day you are a ray of sunshine it comes off as inauthentic. There is nothing wrong with admitting you are having a bad day or that something did not go right for you. Honestly, it makes you more relatable.

As more and more people clamor to understand Twitter, figure out the tricks of the trade, and ride your coattails into Web 3.o… what are you going to do to continue to set yourself apart? How are you moving us all forward? Are you in innovator… or will you evaporate as the playing field levels?

According to the Deloitte Annual Holiday Survey, consumers will be turning to social media sites to help handle their holiday shopping this year. 17% of consumers, to be exact. It comes as no surprise that more than half of these users will be searching for discounts and deals. The rest are looking for gift ideas, and stalking the wishlists of their friends and family members.

Online shoppers predict they will spend an average of $281 online during Q4 2009, a 24 percent increase over last quarter. [via]

In years past, consumers were doing research for purchases online, but still following through with the purchases in retail stores. In the current economic climate these offline consumers are turning into online customers.

It’s about time for a little optimism, don’t you think?

[img]

Blogging successfully requires you to be consistent.  You put a lot of work in behind the scenes to get your blog noticed, and if the people who find you and love what you have to say can’t count on you for new posts on a regular basis, they have no incentive to check back consistently: and your blog is soon forgotten. Sometimes you have an idea you are really excited about and the words flow easily and eagerly with very little editing needed when you’re done. Other times, you may find yourself staring resentfully at the blank screen in front of you, struggling to find a place to begin. It can be difficult after focusing on a days worth of busy work to get creative when all you really want to do is let your heavy eyelids win the battle.

Here is a list of fun websites I’ve found through my travels online that have both entertained and inspired me when I’ve hit a wall.

• One Word: Simple. You’ll see one word at the top of the page. You have 60 seconds to write about it. As soon as you click “go” the page will load with the cursor in place. Don’t think. Just write.
• Free Rice: Sharpen your vocabulary and do some good at the same time! For every word you get right 10 grains of rice are donated through the UN World Food Program.
• 10 Universities offering free writing courses online: MIT, Perdue, and more!
• 501 Writing Prompts: An entire book on Scribd of a variety of writing prompts to get the juices flowing.
• StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon allows you to check off your areas of interest and shuffle through infinite websites that fall into those areas. Shuffle through video, too!

What helps you beat writers block?

[img]

According to NeilsenWire, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return from month to month. For the 10% of us that are responsible for 90% of Twitters content, these abandoned accounts act as dead weight. They’re empty seats in the auditorium.

Enter UnTweeps. UnTweeps connects to your Twitter account and allows you to filter out stale users by entering a number of days (30, 60, 90) since the users last Tweet. It then shows you a list of Twitter slackers  you can unfollow with a simple click. UnTweeps also allows you to create a “white list” of those who you still want to keep around. You don’t want to accidentally unfollow your mom, now do you?

You don’t have to answer that.

[img]

Tutorials can be very helpful when you are trying to learn Photoshop, unfortunately most of them are quite dull. That’s why I got so excited when Laurie Percival of LaLaWag introduced me to this series, “You Suck at Photoshop”.

Donnie Hoyle will definitely hold your attention with his dry sense of humor, showing you how to do useful Photoshop tasks while creating a context that will have you laughing: where most tutorials have you frustrated.

You can check out the entire series at My Damn Channel.