In particular, where did the idea for my colourful dotted logo come from?

Back in February, when I was just starting my company, I read an article by Ed Roach of The Branding Experts, called “How to Build a Powerful Personal Brand“.

In the article he asked the following question

“If I were to ask you, “What is the word or phrase you’d like people to think of when they think of you?” what would it be? Most professionals wouldn’t have a clue. However, the few who can respond thoughtfully have an enormous competitive edge over their colleagues when it comes to marketing their services.”

I though that was an interesting idea, and decided to do a survey amongst about 200 of my friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances.  I sent them the following email:

Dear Friend and Colleague,

I may have known you for many years, or I may have just exchanged a few words with you at some recent networking or professional meeting. I would like to ask your indulgence, and request less than 1 minute of your time.

I am doing an exercise in defining my personal brand, המותג האישי שלי.

Please take just a few seconds to write down the first word or phrase that comes to mind when you think of “Debi Zylbermann”. Please be honest about it – I won’t take any replies personally !

Many thanks,

Debi

Well, you’d be amazed, but I received about 150 replies within 24 hours, and another 30 over the following few days, from people who had been out of the office. All together I got about a 90% reply rate!!

Most of the replies were very supportive (and I’m much to modest to list them, except of course I got quite a few “hats” and ”shoes“ in addition to some of my better character traits !), but the surprising thing, for me, was that the replies of more than 70% included the word: COLOURFUL.

Out of these 70%, quite a few had actually specified a colour, and that colour was PURPLE.

Now, I knew that I was just a bit whacky, but on the other hand, SEO and Software QA are pretty square things to be doing.

So, I had my graphic artist, Edna Segev, try and find me something that was both a bit wacky and not too much so, and to use purple and colours that go well with it. I must admit that I drove her a bit nuts till I was happy with the exact shades of all the colours, but in the end, I’ve got a logo, and brand that suits me down to the ground.

So, how did you get your logo? Do you have a strong brand? I’d love to hear your story in the comments below.

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It’s such a cool tool, I decided to do one of my own (based on Who is Debi’Z)   :-)

What do you think?

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Remember my post on breaking all the branding, SEO and Blogging rules, about how I ended up with 2 blogs, and a prize advert that I didn’t know what to do with?

Well, I sorted it out (I think!) 

1. I’ve created a new blog, with all the posts and comments and stuff from this one.
2. I’ve also given it a new layout. I prefer it, I hope you will.
3. I’ve changed it’s name so that it’s not just about QA, but also about SEO, Business, Work and just Life in general. The “Who am I” has changed (both the link and the content)
4. You can access it at Debi’Z Blog (which in URL terms is http://debizblog.wordpress.com).
5. All subscribers have automatically been redirected to the feed of the new blog.
6. I’m putting this feed on both the old and the new blog, so you may recieve it twice. If you do, that means that all this worked !! If you don’t, it still may have worked (if you received it from the new blog) ….
7. I’m also putting this as a comment on all the blogs that I commented on, so if you also commented on the same blog, please note my new url.

Now all I have to do is to get all my links from the world redirected to the new URL

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And I did it by winning a competition !!

The competition was organized by David Shaw of www.Protycoon.com, who was giving away 6 free advertising banners on his site to the first 6 visitors who would either review his new blog design, review the blog itself, or promote the blog’s RSS feed.

Well, I actually won an ad! (and you can see it by going to his coooool site, with loads of tips on blogging)

Now I had to decide what to do with it.

My business is divided into two pretty equal parts: SEO (search engine optimization, for the uninitiated), and S/W QA (software quality assurance). Since I set up shop, about 5 months ago, I’ve been breaking my head about my Branding and Marketing message. Is it SEO? Is it QA? Is it some type of combination? Or should I drop one of them?

But they are both bringing in clients and cheques, so what to do?

Since I didn’t think David would keep my ad space until I decided this weighty question, I prepared myself an ad that included both:

But then it hit me - my blog didn’t actually say anything about SEO!

So, firstly, I updated my “About Us” page, included SEO in my bio (and subtle marketing message!), and added the fact that an SEO blog is in the works. Next, I wrote this post, so that anyone looking for SEO, after clicking on my ad, would actually find something about it.

What’s Next?

The next thing is to decide whether SEO and QA go into the same blog (Huh! as if I can work THAT one out in 10 minutes).

If yes, then I need to change my blog header, and change my blog URL, and redirect this one to the new one (so that none of you reading this will see the change).

If not, then I need to work out how I direct people who click on my ad, looking for SEO, as easily and quickly as possible onto my SEO blog…

Your comments, this time for sure, will really make a difference to my stategy! So, please comment away…

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