Are You A Freelancer That Uses Twitter?

Tweetlancers is a free resource to allow both businesses and individuals post jobs they need to Twitter at a targeted audience or on the flip side if you are a service provider looking for work you can use the same service to find potential clients.

It’s a simple service to sign up on that will:
As a client – Allow you to easily contact providers who can help fill the work which you need to finish.
As a service provider – Show any incoming tweets that are targeting freelancers with open jobs.

By signing up on this site when you take a look at one of these tweets you will see the contact information of the client or provider you wish to work with. It’s another source to get freelance work done or find freelance jobs depending on which you are looking for. Freelancing is obviously a huge business on the Internet and new ways to find work or workers is always a boon to everyone involved. If you are a, or work with, freelancers you may want to try Tweetlancers.

Re-branding In Chicago Is Causing A Stir

The Sears Tower’s naming rights, which have been expired since 2003, have recently been purchased by the London-based insurance broker Willis Group Holdings, Ltd- who plan on renaming the Sears Tower to “Willis Tower.”

Now Chicago is no stranger to re-branding coming about by changes of ownership. For example in 2005 Macy’s bought out Marshall Fields and finalized converting the stores by 2006. Chicagoans are proud of their city and what is found within its borders. When Macy’s officially moved into the Marshall Field building on State Street, home of the company for years, hundreds of protesters flocked to show their dismay that such a landmark was being re-branded. As of 2007 all of the former Marshall Field’s stores have lost 7-10% in profits with the State Street store losing even more. Now it’s happening again with our greatest landmark.

The Sears Tower was the largest building in the world when built in 1973 and continued to hold this record until either 1998 or 2004 depending how you keep count. It is still the tallest skyscraper in the United States, and the fourth-tallest freestanding structure in the World. While over the next decade it will continue to decline in the height categories it has been the view from anyone close to the city that you first saw on the way in. It is a focal point of the city and many people have special memories of it in their heart. One of my friends was proposed to by her husband there. The changing of just the name of such a central point in Chicago is not a form of branding that the city is approving of in the slightest.

An Idea Of Feeling From An Online Petition

A few days ago, shortly after the news- It’s The Sears Tower was created to bring an actual petition to the new owners to not change the name. As of just past 11:17 am this morning there are 13,000 signatures. In just a few days this many people have signed up online so you can imagine how everyone actually feels about this. So what will Willis Group Holdings, Ltd do? The Sears Tower isn’t the same form of market that Marshall Fields would fall into. They won’t be directly losing profit as Macy’s did and be able to claim naming rights over one of the largest buildings in the world. This is a brand change that is something that will causes unhappiness to those that live and work in the city yet at the same time help the company that owns it enough for them to ignore the these requests. By just having the largest skyscraper in the United States named after them as well as with the thought of the next Olympics in Chicago it is an advertising opportunity for the company that may have them ignore annoying the entire populace of the city.

By no means a new topic I recently ran into multiple bloggers and webmasters who have not heard of or use favicons. Favicons, going by the Wikipedia definition are: “A favicon (short for favorites icon), also known as a website icon, shortcut icon, url icon, or bookmark icon is a 16×16 pixel square icon associated with a particular website or webpage.” Just as I show my Firefox bar pointed at my site above you can see the SC logo as your favicon. It’s a very easy way to help your blog stand out in the eyes of your readers.

Reasons Why Favicons Are Useful:
Bookmarks: When someone bookmarks your site your favicon will appear before your site’s name in their bookmark bar. This helps your reader with both the visual recognition of your blog without having to read the names as well as enable it to stand out from other bookmarks if they do not have favicons.

Tabbed Browsers: As browers are advancing into having tabs many users will have multiple websites open at once. Your favicon should show before your name in these tabs as well allowing users to more easily pick your site out from the open tabs that they may have.

RSS Readers: MANY RSS readers are starting to use the same method as above to help you keep your feeds organized visually. It’s all about standing out.

Favicons and Branding:
My favorite topic to research ties into this as well- Favicons Are Part Of Branding! “Branding” your blog with a favicon helps it stick out using all of the above methods. As your readers become more associated with your blog they will look for that icon in any of the above they use to read your comment. You can even take it a step further. As many use graphics in their signatures it is easy enough to add your favicon before a link to your website within your signature itself.

Using favicons is an easy way to increase identifying that favicon with your website and by extension yourself. In fact many of the favicons that stick out in people’s mind are based off of the site’s logo itself. It is increasing the visibility of your brand and even while in a small way is something that shouldn’t be overlooked.

How To Add A Favicon To Your Website:
Now that you know how Favicons can be useful it’s time to add one to your site. I’m not going to go into all of the methods on making favicons: online converters, online creators, or the multiple places to get favicons for free online. I’ll of course let you check the last sentence for a few ideas on where to get started Once you do have your favicon decided upon though it’s pretty straight forward!
In the HEAD section of your website you just need to add a simple snipet of code:
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/path/favicon.ico"/>

With the path edited to point to the path of your favicon.ico and, your set! Quick, straight forward, and simple!

As most, if not all, marketers will tell you: You NEED to build your brand. If you have a product or service that you want successfully acknowledged, your branding system is the fastest way in which people will be associating you and your product or service with your reputation – meaning the level of trust, confidence, and satisfaction they can expect from you. Every niche site that I have built in the past – the shirt companies that I managed, the ezine that I currently run and the future one I plan to start – have all originated from my desire to establish trusted brands with my niche audiences.

While I have no plans on becoming a “problogger”, the view of branding ones self stems from the necessity to market an ideal version of yourself to your audience. In this line of thinking, your readers and peers need to know and trust YOU as a person in order for you to progress at all. To further expand on this, I am also of the belief that the concept behind marketing yourself stands true for every field and it is one that is often overlooked: Anytime you need to interact with others in a business situation you need to be marketing yourself. With this in mind, I’ve decided that it is a good idea to incorporate a little bit of personal branding into both this blog and a few other areas online.

I decided over the weekend to make a few changes on my blog to bring about this idea of personal branding. What started as a simple task quickly showed exactly how much work personal branding actually involves. I decided to just start with a couple of visual things on the blog itself. On the top of my sidebar, I have added both a picture of me and a mini-biography that links to my “About” page. On the actual “About” page itself, I have added the same picture and a larger biography. This might seem repetitive, but that is precisely the point: Personal branding cannot stop at just your own blog or website, as it and everything else that you do online have to have a continuity. Twitter, forums, comments, social networking sites – everything has to be inline with one another if you are going try to build a brand. Everywhere that someone can see what you are trying to brand has to reflect the consistent idealized view you are marketing.

So if you are looking to build your own brand, here are a few specific posts that you SHOULD check out. I think the best bit of advice for any newer blogger or creators of a company out there is to focus on this idealized, visual representation – the brand – that you are working to develop as it fits into everything involved in selling your product, service, or self.
References
- Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do by: Leo Babauta
- How To Brand Your Blog by: John Chow
- The Importance of Branding And Why You Might Be Screwing It Up Badly by: David Risley
- 3 Powerful Tools For Monitoring Your Brand by: David Risley
- Want a Popular Blog? Put Your Ego Aside by: Daniel Scocco
- A Blogger’s Guide to Branding with Social Media by: Steven Snell