Brand beyond the blog

Posted on 24. Oct, 2008 by Roy in Business

In my last couple of posts on online branding, I often said that, you must win the trust of your visitors. Now, web is not just the blog or websites that you read. It is also about the blogger or webmaster who is developing it. And thus brand is not limited to the blog or website itself. The person behind the blog or website may also become a brand.

People like Matt Cutts, Rand, Godin etc. are brand names. They are more than what they write in their blogs or websites. You can even call those blogs or websites to be products under those brand names. Now, if Matt Cutts starts a business website someday, it would definitely carry forward his brand identity. People may start following his website or his marketing strategy to understand what Google would be doing (a lot of webmasters would start thinking that as a Googler, Matt knows much more about Google algorithm and thus following him may become a craze).

Now, these people have grown into big brands. What about small potato (Tung Do) from WP Designer who created some of the great WP themes! Before selling the blog he started a Themes Club where a member could get access to at least 12 premium themes for $5/year. And the club now has 1320 members.

After the blog was sold, the new owner Pawel Ciszewski did not do anything with the blog (it was last updated on March 28, 2008). As promised, the club members were supposed to get access to at least 12 premium themes but at present there are only 4 themes available in the club.

So who takes the responsibility – Tung or Pawel?

Logic says, it is Pawel’s responsibility to move on with the club or pay back those 1320 members (1320 X $5 = $6600). Or at least he should have declared his plans with the club and the members. But he did nothing so far.

But there are reports that Tung is paying off the club members. Is it his responsibility?

His loss = $6600

His profit = enormous trust he has gained in the blogosphere and people are really talking about this incident. Any business owner would not mind to spend $6600 X n to gain such trust.

Next time if Tung starts something else, he would carry forward the trust he has gained by refunding $6600.

Is he a brand now?

Tags: branding, Online Branding

4 Comments

Kevin Muldoon

24. Oct, 2008

Thanks for the link :)

25. Oct, 2008

A large number of those 1320 memberships were free, as SP gave away lots of free memberships before the sale.

It’s a nice gesture all the same but the timing is interesting; perhaps he’s preparing for a return to blogging in the near future and wants a fresh start without any damage to his reputation.

hd-J

27. Oct, 2008

Nice article!
I personnaly think that Small Potato has published so many great posts on wpdesigner that he is a brand, and the refund won’t make him more popular than he was already.

It is even more obvious when you consider that more than half of the club members did not pay the 5$ (remember his big buzz campaign giving away 20.000 accounts? http://www.wpdesigner.com/2008/02/23/wpdesigner-20000-accounts-giveaway) The man is just being honest and trustwothy. His name is big enough not to need any help for a come-back. When he will launch his next project we will be all listening! Won’t you? :)