5 Day Blog & Brand Creation Experiment

Thank you to Mark W. Schaefer, Stanford Smith, Zoe Griffin,  Seth Godin and Sam Horn for refreshing preparatory principles.  

5 Day Blog & Brand Creation Experiment

After being inspired by reading a few optimum and pre-eminent books about Marketing & Innovation, I decided to take a time test, and work on creating a new brand (for a personal hobby of mine, quick reviews of latest movie trailers from all over the world). I gave myself 7 hours to utilize the free tools of creation  on the Internet to come up with a new brand.

Please do note, I had spent prior time strategizing & planning for the idea with my A4 Diary & pen as per Flabr, and inclusive of that time, it would be 5 days all together in total.

First was naming, using some of writer Sam Horn’s remarkable naming tips & tactics from POP!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything (you can purchase a copy here), I came up with TRAILERTEUR - a combination of trailers of latest films, merged with “teur” for Auteur

Once I had the name, the next step was designing a very quick, preliminary logo or banner.  I don’t have any experience with graphic design but I have great respect for the profession, especially those who use Adobe Photoshop and conduct advanced design.

Keeping in mind my limitations, I came across Logomakr on Google Search and eventually came up with the logo below.

Once design was done, I had to decide on a Platform.  I'm a frequent user of Blogger in the last few years, though I prefer using Wordpress equally.  Finally, for this particular blog, I decided to use Wordpress.

Customization & personalization of these free tools still take time & effort in order to set-up properly so you're in the right mood to write, and your platform is individualized for you, and personifies your brand.

Once design and customization in Wordpress was done (including inclusion of Widgets and the logo & banner), the next step was creating a quick Facebook page for the blog. This was an enjoyable task, and the initial Facebook page is now ready, you can view it HERE.

Finally, I wanted to conduct a few quick polls, and Wordpress integration with PollDaddy was exceptionally simple.  In the end, I needed YouTube to embed the videos.  The combination of all the tools together to create a quick brand in 5 days was exhilarating, exciting and a lot of fun.

Key steps:

1. Naming your blog & brand utilizing techniques from Sam Horn’s POP!: Create the Perfect Pitch, Title, and Tagline for Anything
2. Choosing what Platform out of blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Typepad and Joomla
3. Creating a logo with a free online software Logomakr
4. Find a relevant image in UNSPLASH that I can use.
5. Setting up a Facebook Page for the brand including customization and personalization as well as including the logo design
6. Integrate Polldaddy and Wordpress together into one for easier creating & uploading of polls
7. Integrate social media accounts into the blog (LinkedIN, Twitter, Facebook)

The aim of the experiment was to develop the preliminary infrastructure utizling the free tools of the Internet and spend time on learning what social networks, and most importantly, what combinations, are the most effective & enjoyable together.

It was a rewarding, educational, fun-filled, & super-scholastic experience. The tools were easy to utilize with superb instructions on how to use the tools (Wordpress, PollDaddy, Unsplash, LogoMakr, Facebook, & internet widgets within Wordpress), and within 7 hours (provided you're prepared prior with some planning and are experienced with the tools), you can prepare the preliminary framework & infrastructure for your personal and/or business blog & brand with rapid speed.

The end output is TRAILERTEUR that you can view HERE.

It's currently a passionate hobby with nil budget, so I will continue to contribute to it as a free blog as a hobby, however the final intention as a commercial venture, if I do find the right super-sponsor & squad would include the following paid tasks:

1) Have a self-hosted paid domain

2) Redesign the entire template and layout of the website

3) Redesign the logo & banner

4) Have paid Facebook advertising to grow readership

5) Custom design Widgets for the site

It made me realize how quick you can do things on the Internet, how easy it is to integrate social media tools together to uniquely and effectively create a brand with the free tools, and how you can use multiple social media creation tools super simaltaneously to come up with something simple & easy-to-use for your personal hobby.

If you have any advice, recommendations, guidance or instructions on how to improve this experiment further please leave me a comment, tweet me, or e-mail me at prashanthh2016@gmail.com as it will regularly evolve.

Thank you,

Praz aka Prashant