Thursday, April 20, 2006

Danny Sullivan's multi-million dollar brand

Search Engine Watch‘s Danny Sullivan has written a lengthy, very interesting piece about his decade of writing about search. In addition to the juicy goodness related to search in his piece, it’s fascinating to see how Danny Sullivan has become such a brand in his own right - and one that didn’t need focus groups, overpaid image consultants, or lots of smoke and mirrors about ‘branding’ from people who wouldn’t know the true meaning of the word if it hit them in the head.

Rather, Danny’s brand has emerged from his behaviour, which is precisely where every company’s true brand originates. All of the flashy logos in the world won’t matter if everyone thinks of you as unreliable or mediocre. By being both reliable and excellent, Danny Sullivan has an amount of trust and esteem from his constituents that most companies would pay millions to acquire. For trust and esteem are the true measures of a long-lasting, sterling brand. Something as seemingly ‘little’ as whether or not your landing pages are useful or frustrating and time wasting can have a huge effect on your branding. So how are you doing with branding - you know, the whole reliability and trust thing?