Rebranding your site

(I already posted this on another forum, but considering Brandon has obviously done rebranding here, additional perspectives would be welcome. )

In the next few weeks, I plan on launching a blog frontpage alongside my forum to act as an area for music news and certain things that won't fit or can't be placed on the forum. This brings up the issue, however, that my site name (The Voice Internet Radio) doesn't make much sense as the name of the blog, especially considering the content related to the station will be kept to the forum (whereas the blog will have more of an orientation on music news, music in tech, audio/video, etc.). As such, I've been considering rebranding the site to something more friendly toward the site, while the radio station and station-specific areas of the forum would keep the Voice "brand."

My question is this: have you ever considered rebranding your site, or did you actually go through with it? If so, what was your experience? Any significant challenges, benefits, etc.? Are you ultimately glad that you made the change?

 

Why not keep your forum as the name it has now and buy a new URL for the blog, then send traffic to the forum from the blog.
Create a network in your niche

I feel branding is VERY important in any site of business. It's how people will remember you, there are many things you can do to strengthen your brand.

References:
http://mashable.com/2008/07/18/building-your-online-brand/
http://searchengineland.com/why-brand-trumps-roi-3-tips-to-build-your-brand-online-66853

Nice site full of good info. http://30lines.com/

 

Thanks for the articles, Brandon (bookmarked 30lines to read later tonight ). I didn't know Chris Brogan guest-posted on Mashable before...guess it used to be a little better quality-wise, hehe.

I was thinking about keeping the voiceradio domain for the forum, but with the direction I plan to take brand-wise, I think it'd be more cohesive to make it the forum name as well. I'd ideally like to keep the radio station the same (don't have to deal with changing info on a bunch of directories or get all new liners and sweepers for the station), but I haven't figured out exactly how to integrate that cohesively (perhaps a subforum specifically for station info; it'd have the new domain, but voiceradio.us would redirect to the new .com domain so that old links won't break).

I do plan on sending traffic from the blog to the forum as you suggested--I may also end up purchasing that XenScripts bridge that would allow comments to be posted on the blog through forum accounts.