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1. Having a Clear Purpose You must have a crystal clear vision about the purpose of your website, and you must communicate that to the visitors as well. They must know why they are visiting your website. Why it is worth their time. Your aim is to make people associate a concept or thing with your custom web design. If I say online video, you are going to think YouTube. It is not easy, and it takes time, but you should always keep this principle in mind. 2. Being Consistent with the Writing Style There are many studies confirming that the writing part of a blog or website is one of the main parameters that readers use to determine the overall quality of that site. You need to be consistent with your writing style if you want to strengthen your brand with it. It does not matter if you write to bring your personal experiences aboard or if you try to keep a more neutral tone, the important thing is to be consistent with it. 3. Sticking with Your Tagline Using a tagline is not mandatory, although it can help if you come up with a really catchy and descriptive one. The important thing, however, is that you stick with it. It gets stuck in people’s heads. If you change your tagline every other month, people won’t remember it, and they might even get confused about it. If you are going to use a tagline, you could also consider adding it to the title tag of your website. This will make sure that the tagline will be displayed on search engines when users come across your site, reinforcing the message that you want to pass. 4. Investing Money in a Good Logo Just like medieval castles used to be identified by their flags, websites are identified by their logos. If you have limited money to spend on design, make sure that the logo is your top priority. The logo is important because it is the first thing that visitors pay attention to, and usually it is also the image that will stick in their minds once they are gone. 5. Using a Favicon Most modern browsers support favicons, therefore you should make use of them. Try to adapt your logo, or use the initials of the name of your site, and put them on the favicon. Favicons are also important because they will appear on the bookmark section of your users, enabling them to recognize your website more easily among the hundreds of others. 6. Making the Design match the Content The overall look and feel of your design must match the content. If you plan to talk about stock markets, it would be weird to have flowers on the background image right? Identify what your core audience is going to be, and design around their perceptions and preferences. If you are going to write for professionals or older people, perhaps a traditional newspaper look would be a good choice. If your readers will be younger, a more colorful custom web design could be used. 7. Being Consistent with the Colors Make sure to choose a color palette and to stick with it. Colors and moods are very easy to be remembered, so use this in your favor. You could use the main color on the links, on the favicon, on the footer and so on. If you are going to create special images or badges for the website, make them match the overall color pattern. Throughout the years it is probable that you will need to give a face-lift to your design. Keep consistent with the color so readers will still feel at home, and your brand will be kept intact. 8. Using Your Website’s Name on Social Media Are you going to use Twitter? FriendFeed? Facebook? If you are, you could create an account on each of those services specifically for your website. Social networks are a big online trend, and probably one that will last. If you manage to get your site inside those networks, your brand will rejoice. 9. Spending Money on Advertising If branding was easy, companies around the world would not spend billions of dollars every year on advertising. It is possible to create a strong brand without spending money on advertising, but paid promotional efforts can certainly make you reach this goal easier and faster. If you don’t have a big budget, you could consider spending money only during the launch and on the first few months. Use the money to kick start your brand, and after that work with the content and free methods. One advantage of paid advertising is that it allows you to deliver a specific message to a specific audience. If you purchase a banner on a popular blog, for example, you know who will be reading that, and you can tailor your words to pass your brand to those readers. 10. Spreading it Everywhere Branding is psychological, meaning that you will need to get inside people’s heads. Sometimes this will inevitably be a numbers game. That is, the more exposure you manage to give to your brand in front of the web users, the longer it will stick with them. Practically speaking, use your website name and logo in as many different places as possible. Put the link on your email signatures. Write guest articles for popular blogs and put your website name on the byline. Talk about your website in online forums. Purchase advertising banners. Stamp t-shirts with your website logo on it and so on. Daily Blog Tips. “10 Ways to Brand Your Blog or Website Efficiently.” 28 Dec. 2009 [http://www.dailyblogtips.com/10-ways-to-brand-your-blog-or-website-efficiently/].
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