Building your first site, from domain to full blown brand

Before about 3-5 years ago, when people thought they wanted to start a site it was relatively simple. You could simply buy your domain, and throw your favorite script up, install it, and be off and running.

Now its a little more complicated and in depth process to get a solid foundation and ensure longevity. One of the hardest parts of getting your new forum up and going is building the brand of the forum. Branding is a relatively old concept, but its recently caught a lot of fire lately with social media sites, and search engine rankings.

The best definition I've found for the word brand defines it as a promise: A promise of value, a promise that your site is better than the competitors site. For your brand to work, this promise must be delivered.

When you go to launch your domain, you should also cover getting it an account on the top 3-5 social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, and Stumbleupon are what come to my mind first when I think of sites that can help build your site.

When you go to build your brand you'll want to be sure it fits the following criteria. But please note, these are not all inclusive of your success, with the correct marketing team/SEO Specialist anything is possible.

• Short easy to remember domain.
• No hyphens, or an absolute maximum of 2 hyphens.
• A unique logo that conveys your brand or message.
• Have a catchy way to promote your brand.
• Promote yourself, with your site.
• Become an expert on your niche.
• Build relationships with fellow sites, members, and participants.
• Stay up to date.

Now lets examine each of those points above, and the benefits of them.

Short easy to remember domains and minimal on hyphens, will allow members to simply recall your site from memory without thinking about it. A nice easy domain would be something like AdminAddict.net, A bad one would be something like ThisDomain-IsLongAndI-WontRememberItTomorrow-WhenIWantToComeBack.com. Having long, hyphenated domains can come across as spamish, and amateurish.

A unique logo will give users something to recognize your brand by. Some times words won't be neccassary, and a user can simply see your logo and they'll know what it is. (Think something like the "Twitter bird" or a Chevy logo.)

Promote yourself, and your brand while being an expert! No one will join a site that they've never heard of the owner, or the brand, and especially not if the owner him/herself is knowledgeable or in the dark. You'll also find your site easier to work on and stay interested with. If you don't know anything about cars, but start a site about cars, then chances are good you'll have a tough time building the site, and getting others interested. On the flip side, if you enjoy building computers, and start a site about custom PC's then you'll do just fine.

Building relationships within your niche is a major part of success. Don't look at other sites as your enemy, or that the webmasters of those sites as dick heads, and idiots even if they are, instead look at them as if they simply aren't as good as you. They aren't as smart, or they can't implement the features you can. Learn from their mistakes, converse with them about things that may have worked for them in the past, and what hasn't worked. You'll get a ton of good idea's from people that have been in your shoes. But the only way to get this information from them most the time is to become their friends.

Stay up to date, not just with your software powering your site, but with the information. Information for the most part is constantly changing, growing with society, and needs revisions and updates every so often. Set a day or two a month to review past articles and update or revise them as needed. Staying up to date with your software is vital as well, it lets your community/visitors know your care and enjoy maintaining the site.

Building a successful brand doesn't happen over night, and it won't be easy. You'll need to work hard at it, stay motivated and remember its a long hard road with ups and downs.

I'd like to hear your idea's and techniques for building a brand so be sure to leave a comment.

Please note: This article was written specifically for AA and is now sole property of AdminAddict owners. Permission must be granted by AA owners for reproduction of this article.

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One thing that I would like to clarify is that, yes you should have a high interest in your specific niche, but you don't necessarily need to be an "expert" right away.

THE biggest t-shirt decorating forum in the industry was started by a man who, yes, had an interest in t-shirt decorating, but was by no means an expert, and was not even a decorator himself when he started his forum. He was a webmaster and programmer.

But he took the time to learn, gather information, and facilitate the experts with his site.

It also helped that he has the #1 .com domain name for what his forum is, along with buying up all similar domains to prevent domain confusion.

Even if you're not an expert off-the-bat, show that you have an interest as you're developing your community, stick with it, and become an expert.

 

Great advice Chani!

 

This is something I think all administrators should read and those considering starting a forum too. Extremely informative, I enjoyed reading this. Thank you!

 

Thanks for your awesome article!

 

David,

Thanks for taking the time to provide this insightful article. It got some good meat for its brevity.

I have a General question because I'm just not personally involved with the Social Media Sites. Not by choice exactly, but so far they haven't felt to be need, if you will. Quite possibly others are like that, the older ones of us out there.

So when you say to make an account on them, I'd like to know what you mean explicitly. E.g., Create an account that is named as your Domain? You would use the email address of the domain?

I'm trying to see what this means in your recommendations here.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for a fantastic article - I am currently busy re-branding our site and this will no doubt come into play.

My main is SEO I don't know the first thing about it and that is where I am struggling the most.

This article should be a must read for all webmasters looking to start a site. Now just gotta find FMB for a good copy of my logo haha.