You brand and logo design are the visual gateway into what your business does, how it relates with your audience, and the lasting impression they might remember about your brand identity.

With all of this at play, it’s important to make sure that you not only have a quality logo for your site, brand or business — but also one that relates with your audience and portrays a positive message in the process.

If you are still in the beginning phases of designing your own logo or think you might want to update it with a new one, there are a number of important factors to keep in mind. To help you out, here are the five most important things to consider when making your own logo design.

1) Your Logo Conveys Messages About Your Brand

A logo is much more than a piece of art meant to represent your company – it’s also an opportunity for you to convey key messages about your brand to your audience. Before you begin creating your logo design, you’ll first want to determine the most important messages you want your logo to communicate. Once you’ve highlighted these messages, the next challenge is to create a logo design that communicates these messages in an effective and clever way.

Take a look at any of the images in the LogoMyWay portfolio and you will quickly see a trend amongst the top designs on their site. Not only are they all professional and high in quality, they also represent the look and feel of the brands. Some of the best logo designs in the world don’t even need words attached to them, and people just know what they are.

2) Professionalism is Paramount

Like it or not, customers tend to make very swift judgements about a company when deciding whether or not they want to part with their hard-earned money. With that said, if your company is represented by a logo that looks as if it was designed by a middle-schooler using Microsoft Paint then you are probably going to have a hard time convincing your audience that your company is a professional and reliable company that is worthy of their business.

If you aren’t confident that you can create a logo design that will portray your brand in the best possible light then it’s better for you to hire a professional designer to help rather than trying to create a design on your own. While our online logo designer makes it easy for almost anyone to create an original and professional-looking design, it is still essential for you to keep the importance of professionalism in mind when creating your own logo design.

3) Simplicity is Often Best

Unless you are graphic design specialist, creating a complex and highly-artistic logo may be a challenge. The good news, though, is that many of the best logos are often quite simple in their design. Ultimately, a clean and professional-looking logo that is designed to communicate an important message about your brand will be much more effective than an over-the-top and unnecessarily-complex design. As with many things, keeping it simple is often the best bet when designing your own logo.

Way too many brands and businesses are focused on trying to create a logo design or brand that is just way to complicating. Take a look at the cleanliness and professionalism that is given from the VeraClinic logo above. You can click here to visit their site and see how well the colors and simple text-design logo compliments their site, while also proving a classic look and feel that relates with their audience and clients as well.

4) Consider the Four Pillars of a Logo Design

If you are designing your own logo, there are four different design elements that you will want to keep in mind:

1. color scheme
2. images
3. text
4. and font

The text you include may be as simple as your company name, or you may choose to include a tag-line in addition to your company name. Both the color scheme and font that you choose for your logo, meanwhile, will communicate important messages about the culture and mission of your company.

Lastly, the images you choose to use in your logo design will make up the bulk of the design and should likewise be meant to portray various attributes of your brand. Put all of these elements together into a creative and well-thought-out design and you will have a logo that will serve your brand well.

5) Your Logo Needs to be Scalable

When you first design your logo using any of the top online logo makers, it will appear as a piece of clip art – and this is likely how your logo is going to appear in many other applications as well. However, there are also a number of other ways you may wish to use your logo in the future that require you to scale it up from its original size.

For example, you may want to put your logo on a sign outside your building, use it on a billboard advertisement, use it on your product’s label, and more. Unfortunately, designs that look great as clip art don’t always look as good when they are scaled up to a much larger size.

When creating your own logo design, therefore, it’s essential to keep in mind the many ways you might end up using your logo and develop a design that is versatile and scalable.

Conclusion

No matter if you are just starting out with your brand identity or have been around for over a decade, the process of creating a logo for your brand is one of the most important things you will do. It’s definitely not something that should be rushed or handed off to a freelancer to complete for just a few dollars.

With that said, though, there are still a number of considerations to be aware of if you want the logo that you create to serve your brand in the best way possible. By following the advice outlined above and taking advantage of our incredibly easy to use online logo maker, you should be well on your way to creating an effective and eye-catching logo design.

For anyone who has had experience in serious blogging, it becomes very apparent very quickly running a successful operation involves a lot of different hands in the cookie jar. From multiple writers to help with coordination and scheduling to programming behind the scenes and marketing strategy, multiple users and players could be involved, all accessing the same account.

As a result, having a secure channel for work and access is absolutely essential. Leaving this aspect of the blog operation unsecure is about as open-ended as a giant barn door entryway allowing anything in and out. And given how big the Internet is, there will inevitably someone who will take great pleasure in causing a little bit of havoc with a blog, especially if that person doesn’t like what’s written on it.

Racking Up the Practical Advantages

A virtual private network, or VPN, locks down the back and forth channel necessary to make a blog work and give your team the ability to access it from multiple locations. The best way to understand a VPN is to use it via a 30 days VPN trial, but we’ll detail more info below. Everything from a simple transfer of work into and out of the blog account as well converging online on a team project and simultaneous activity on a cloud platform gets protected. In addition, a VPN gives you, the blog owner a number of protections that come in very handy for both your blog and you personally:

1. Privacy

One of the core benefits of VPN use is that others can’t tap into it without authorization. And what people don’t know, they generally don’t go after or snoop around in. Online privacy allows you to work on your blog and content without worries about accidental interception which happens more often than people think, especially on public wi-fi and router setups. In the competitive blogging world, depending on the topic, breaking the story first is often the driver for traffic, and losing one’s content to snooping characters who try to intercept data is a common problem. A VPN puts up a very formidable wall, blocking such a problem unless the character has an inside authorization.

2. Identity Protection

Your blog may run on a team or brand identity versus a personal one. In the past, folks would identify a blog owner and his or her personal address by using a whoami approach with the domain ownership of the blog site, but that became a bit useless when blogs started getting supported by platform services like WordPress. However, a good amount of the content traffic and IP identification can still pinpoint your personal identity and address if viewed open-ended. Again, a VPN stops this kind of traffic from even being seen or read, which in turn keeps your personal identity behind your blog brand private as well.

3. Securing Online Finance Transactions

Are you supporting and moving money back and forth through your blog and it’s related activities. Chances are you probably don’t want that information or your credit card numbers to be openly read like a billboard on the side if an interstate freeway. A VPN keeps all your payment and recurring orders safe and out of prying eyes. The only way someone is going to get your credit card is if the service you are using has their database compromised versus you transmitting a payment and related data packet. So, choose your services wisely and keep your spending covered up online.

4. Geographical Information is Blocked

If you’re a political blogger and your content is sensitive in the sense that it probably doesn’t garner warm reviews from a given governmental agency where you are working, then keeping your work and computer location private is a must. The fact is, free speech is usually not welcome in a lot of the world, even in free countries. And your Internet activity has geo-location data tied to it. Using a VPN blocks bureaucrats and agency snoops from picking up this information and hamstringing your mobile blog operation on regulatory nuances used frequently to hamper a blogger.

5. Keep Your Files Confidential

If you put confidential on a file, your expectation is that it should only be read or used by those authorized. Unfortunately, when you transfer a data file on an open channel, anyone with the right tools can read it. A VPN file transfer locks down access to your file so it doesn’t get misdirected or opened between your computer and the destination folder online.

6. Improving Your Own Financial Image Online

It’s no secret that online stores and sellers use cookies and similar tracking information to determine if you are a repeat customer. And that often means if you keep coming back, you may not be made eligible for the lowest price deal, as those tend to be an attractant for new first-time visitors. Using a VPN blocks your identity so well, you get treated just like a new-time visitor every time you visit a store site. And once you accept their lowest price offered, that means it can’t be denied unless the store is out of inventory. The bottom line is, a regularly-used VPN is going to save you money again and again, avoiding higher pricing levied on return customers on various websites. And that means more money in your pocket to run your blog better.

Protecting Yourself Against Everything Online

We can’t promise a VPN will be the cure-all for every blogging challenge, but it sure goes a long ways in making your life easier and removing a lot of potential problems that plague bloggers in particular.

The best way to find out how much this can help your operations is to get experience hands on, whether through a free trial or through a similar test period option. What you’re going to find is that you probably have a lot of vulnerabilities and have been lucky so far not to be targeted. And you’re going to realize how much better protected your blog could be with a VPN.

In order to build a successful blog, you have to think big right from the start. Not just about the ultimate dreams and goals for your site, but also how you are going to get there. With more than a billion active websites and blogs on the internet today, it’s super easy to get started with a site of your own, but it’s very different to stand out from the crowd and actually make money from your site.

Of course, your options for why you are starting and if you even wanted to try and make money with it are two different things. Many blogs are for personal use or as a hobby, while others are for businesses and to help promote different services to audiences around the world.

In any event, if you have things to say and you know how you’re going to say them, you’ve already made the first step. But for your blog to grow, you have to aim at building more than traffic! In 2019, getting sheer numbers is not the equivalent of success anymore.

If you want your blog to be a hit, then you have to build a community!

Here are some essential tips on how to do that:

Understand the Basics of Blog Building 101

Before anything else, you have to learn how to be a blogger from tech to text. That means that you have to become a proficient WordPress user and set up a platform that your readers will actually want to use. You have to cover everything from design to SEO and all the way to social media. In 2019, a successful blog has to be connected socially because this enables it to reach many more users.

This also means that your blog strategy must be an integrated approach to WordPress, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, at least.

Engage your readers to interact with you and with each other

Since you are helping people solve their cooking, fashion, travel, or tech problems, ask them for their opinion, their comments, their likes, and their dislikes. Strike up a conversation with your readers and engage them to interact with you via comments. Moreover, try to get them to interact with each other as well to get them to feel like they are part of an actual community.

A great way to accomplish this is to try gamification and seeing how it works with your audience. This simply means creating polls, small games, or competitions for your readers. These will convince them to interact with your content from an entirely different side.

Find out what your readers need and write about it

Do you know what people care about the most? Their problems. If you can help people solve their problems, then they will become your readers. Whether you are building a cooking blog, a fashion blog, or a tech blog, the central part of your content strategy should be identifying the problems, struggles, and issues that your target audience is dealing with. If you write about how these problems can be fixed, then the people are going to listen!

Don’t write about yourself, write about your readers!

Just to make this clear, you are not the one fixing your readers’ problems. You are merely providing the resources for them to do it. Be humble, be modest, be helpful, and your readers will feel the love and they will come back for more. Remember that your readers’ problems are your main focus, so don’t make yourself the center of attention. People are likelier to remember you if you are genuinely helpful than if you tell them that you are their savior. Your readers want to be the main characters in your content, so write things that they can relate to!

Check your competition and be better!

Whichever niche you’ve chosen to blog about, you are most likely not the only one who’s doing it. You have competition out there and it’s your responsibility to get acquainted with what they are doing so that you can do it better! Do your research on what your competitors are writing about. Think about it as a virtual brainstorming session because this will give you plenty of ideas on what you should cover in your content.

Remember that your aim is to top what they’ve done and to do it all in your voice and by your standards. It’s not just about knowing who your competition and where/how they are moving up in the search results and creating content, but also how you can replicate their process and do it even better.

Build your very own online community

Whether it’s targeted on fashion, cooking, or travel, a blog unites people who share the same needs or the same interests. This is something that you can use to your advantage because your audience can actually turn into a community if you facilitate this process. That means that you have to help them see that they have things in common with your other readers. To do that, you have to encourage user-generated content and maximize its potential when you get it.

For instance, you can have a section on your blog, which is dedicated to questions that your readers put up. You can answer these questions, but you can also encourage other users to contribute. And if you would like to expand upon the concept of buiding a community, you could also replicate your content within a private group, or starting a  new Facebook Fan Page at the very least. This works really well because it builds another source of traffic and community for your brand, while also being on Facebook — which already has over two billion users.

In summary…

To sum it all up, building a blog means focusing on your users – on the problems they are facing, on how they can solve them, and on what gets them to engage.

Analyze your competition and find out how you can be better than them – they will give you some awesome ideas on how to do the fine-tuning for your content. Write in your voice, always, but don’t write about yourself, write about your users – and they will feel cherished and loved, and they will keep coming back for more!

The more you experiment with your blogging efforts, the better you will get at it over time. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day… and neither wil the ultimate success of your blog.

There are around 627,000 new businesses that are opened each year. If you’re opening your own business, then you’re going to want it to be successful.

There are plenty of ways to market your business to potential customers but you should aim to find the best marketing strategies. You will need to do some trial and error to see what works best for you and your business.

When planning your marketing strategy you also shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket by only going down one route. Try to spread out the ways that you do marketing for your business.

Keep reading for seven of the most effective marketing strategies that you can use for your business.

1. Social Media Marketing

If you don’t already have social media accounts for your company, then you should get to making those ASAP. Marketing through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or even Youtube is an awesome way to reach your target audience. Social media marketing is a free way to get your brand and name out there. If you produce good content, then people will follow you.

Social media is also a great way for you to interact with current and future customers. If you get any questions or concerns sent to your social media accounts, you should aim to respond within 24 hours. The quicker you reply, then the better image people will have of you and your business.

2. Marketing Through Blog Posts

There are so many reasons why you need to have a blog component to your business’ website. Don’t make a new website for your blog but rather add it to your current business’s website because this is the best way for viewers to see the products or services that you have for sale.

A blog is a great way to create fresh content which will help you get recognized in search engines. Most of the time the elements of our business website don’t get updated unless we have new products. That’s why a blog gives your website new content and helps to get more traffic directed toward your website.

You can also use your blog to branch out to new customers and create shareable content. If your content is interesting and worth sharing, then you will also get some free advertisement when someone shares one of your posts.

3. Facebook Advertising

Another great strategy to add to your plan is to advertise on Facebook. Adverting through Facebook has so many perks. They help to narrow down and find your target audience so you know the exact demographic that is seeing your advertisements.

You may be surprised to know that it is also relatively cheap to advertise on Facebook! You could spend as little as one dollar a day, which is only $30 a month, and still get your advertisement seen by thousands of people. Facebook is a great place to advertise because you’re sure to find your target audience there.

4. Email Marketing

Email marketing is an awesome way to send potential customers information right to their inboxes. In the beginning, it may be a bit tough to build your email list database but you just need to give people an incentive. This incentive could be saving some money as long as they sign up for your email list.

You should also be straightforward with people when asking them to give you their email address. Let them know that you will be sending weekly or daily emails to let them know all about your company and what you have to offer.

Make sure you don’t spam! No one likes to get tons of unsolicited emails that they don’t care about. Sending a lot of unnecessary emails will only make people unsubscribe from your list or block you which you don’t want.

5. Use Geofencing Marketing

Geofencing marketing is an awesome way to market your business to your potential customers. This type of marketing works by targeting your audience right down to a specific location. It can even go as far as marketing to people at competing businesses, malls, convention centers, or even neighborhoods.

Marketing this way is a perfect way to reach the exact audience that you’re aiming for. When people go into the geofence during a specific time, then they will be put into your audience and see your advertisement for up to 30 days. You can learn about geofencing marketing and implement it into your marketing strategy.

6. Direct Selling

Direct selling is one of the best ways to market your company because you will be able to talk directly to your customers and convince them to buy your products. This is a face to face way to influence potential customers.

Make sure to build relationships with potential customers as well as current customers. Having a strong relationship with your customers is one of the easiest ways for them to buy from you business again. If they feel they you appreciate them and their business, then they will be more willing to work with you.

7. Work With Other Brands

Another way to get your name and company out there for potential customers to see if to work with other brands. You don’t need to work with brands that sell exactly the same thing that you do, but rather ones that align with your goals and products.

Working with other brands can help potential customers come to you as well as your co-brand. Make sure that you also support the brand you’re working with. This will help to build trust between you, customers, and other brands.

Find the Most Effective Marketing Strategies

Finding the most effective marketing strategies for you and your business should be easy. There are so many different options that you can choose from. Do a bit of trial and error with your business until you find the right marketing strategies for you.

If you want to start your own blog for your company, then make sure to check out our website for all the tips and tricks on how to run and manage it all on your own.

Having a blog component for your company’s website is crucial in today’s world of search engine optimization. It is a great way to create fresh content to help out your website.

But as a business owner, you might be a little too busy running your business to worry about creating new shareable content. This is when you should hire a blogger to help you out. A blogger can create all the content you need for your blog and help more people see your products.

Keep reading for our top tips on how you can find and hire a blogger that fits the style of your business and helps drive traffic to your website.

Look for a Niche Blogger

When hiring a blogger for your business you don’t just want someone who knows how to write well. Find someone who has professional expertise in your business’s niche. This way they will have prior knowledge so you can give them a lot of free reigns when it comes to the content that they create.

Be Prepared to Pay

If you want good quality content from a blogger, then you should be prepared to pay for it. There are many freelance bloggers that offer a wide variety of different price points for their services. Any good blogger is going to want to make a decent wage when they’re creating content for you.

Once you hire a blogger to create content for your blog you will want to look into ways to create a pay stub for them. This way you can keep track of what you’re paying them and they can do the same. There are tons of easy and quick ways that you can create a pay stub online that will help you out greatly.

Check Out Their Blog

Any blogger looking for a job will either have their own blog or a portfolio of their work. Check out all of the posts they’ve written in the past and see if their style would fit into your business. You want a blogger that can be personable but also writes good and informative content.

Setup a Time To Communicate

Before hiring a blogger, you will want to make sure that you can set up a time either weekly or monthly to meet with them. You want your blogger to have good communication skills and time to do it. Make sure you pick a time that you will regularly meet to discuss what is going on with your blog.

After all, your blog is sometimes viewed as the face of your company as that is what the consumer will see when searching for you. Making sure that the blogger you hire has good communication skills is crucial.

Hire a Blogger

When it comes to figuring out how to hire a blogger for your business there are many things that you will want to look into. Make sure to find someone that you can trust and someone who can create content worth sharing.

If you want more tips on how to start a blog, then check out our website for more helpful advice.

Did you know that there are 505,000,000 blogs out there today? It’s true, and more sites are going live daily.

However, don’t let that number scare you! There is still a lot of validity in starting your own blog today — especially if you are already an existing business and looking to provide more value to your current customers, while also reaching new audiences in the process.

If you are currently sitting on the sidelines and haven’t jumped into the world of WordPress, content creation and blogging, there is no better time than right now. Best of all, there are really no technical or design skills required, and more often than not, web hosting and set up will only cost you a few dollars per month.

With all of that being said, if you are interested in getting something set up to earn some extra cash from your writing, or to even grow out your existing website, brand, or business… you will get a ton of value out of the top list we created for you below.

Before we get started, it’s important to know that there are many different websites, blogs, hosting platforms, and content management solutions out there to help you get started with your blog. That is what we will be covering in detail with each of the eight solutions listed below.

Let’s get started.

1. WordPress

WordPress is the most iconic of all blogging platforms in the world. With over 75 million websites powered by WordPress. With free and paid for platforms with easy to use interfaces and plenty of customization options, it is easy to see why they are so dominant.

There is also no shortage of articles offering instructions about how to start a blog on WordPress.

To learn more about how to get started with a website or blog of your own, all you need to do is visit any of these resources and then walk through the simple step-by-step process that is laid out for you.

2. Wix

With drag and drop logic available for those who are less technically inclined, Wix is one of the best blogging platforms for writers of all skill sets.

One drawback is that the free version of the site is very limited. What keeps Wix from being the best blogging platform is the combination of price and limited features compared to WordPress. Still a solid runner up.

Wix is also a name that you’ve likely seen advertised on television commercials, on YouTube ads, and also with celebrity endorsements. It’s also very simple to use and quite affordable.

3. Tumblr

Tumblr is the best free blogging platform for those looking to share their work with other bloggers. Tumblr works a little different than some of the other sites on this list.

A microblogging site that combines blogging and social media into a single package, it is a great place for people looking to share their ideas with other creatives.

4. Weebly

One of the great blogging platforms for beginners, Weebly offers drag-and-drop technology allowing users to easily create great-looking websites. The price is less than Wix which uses similar technology but comes with more restrictions in regards to integration and customization.

5. Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the blogging platforms that is making a lot of waves right now. Ideal for small businesses, it uses drag-and-drop logic to create stunning sites.

While not a site for full-time bloggers, it does offer good earning potential for businesses that are willing to invest the time in creating engaging content.

6. Joomla

The priciest of the blogging platforms, it is still possibly the best blogging site to make money as it offers a complete content management system. It is a more technical site than many others, meaning it is best for those with some knowledge on website design.

It offers a range of revenue generation streams that can help those that know how to use it recoup their monthly costs and more. \

The Best Blogging Site to Make Money is the One that Works for You

There is no shortage of blogging platforms out there, and while the above sites are the best of the best, the real answer is always going to come down to the individual. The best blogging site to make money depends on your goals, content, and level of web design skills.

For more help and information on how you can start your own blog, check out some of our other articles today. We have all the resources you need to make your site something special and stand out from the crowd.