Lewis Empire

Creating a successful blog is much more than simply writing great content and supporting the blogging community. Anyone who has decided to create more than just a place to post thoughts and daily happenings needs to approach their blog like a business, rather than a hobby.

If you look at other businesses, both on and off the web, you will see a great deal of emphasis on creating, maintaining and strengthening their brand. One important tactic that creates high value but is very easy to implement is the Favicon.

What is a Favicon?
Just as Blog is to “Web Blog” the term Favicon comes from “Favorites Icon”. Basically, the favicon is the little icon that you can see next to your domain name in the address box (branding spot #1) and in list when people favorite your site (branding spot #2). The icon itself can be either 16×16 or 32×32 pixels and it is saved as a .ico file. Please note: you cannot simply change the image extension to say .ico. It can be converted from an image format at www.htmlkit.com/services/favicon/.

Light the Ignition
The reason the favicon is so powerful is because it gives you the ability to maintain a consistent image or logo no matter where you are or who visits your site. My favicon is a little bag of money: . I also use this image (larger) as the MyBlogLog image (branding spot #3) which shows up whenever I make comments on other blogger’s sites.

To add your favicon to your website, simply login to your admin section and modify the Header.php file with the following code (placed somewhere between the HEAD tags):

Here is the text so you can cut and paste:
Link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.lewisempire.com/favicon.ico”
Link rel=”icon” href=”http://www.lewisempire.com/favicon.ico”

Creating a favicon is easy. The difficult part is coming up with the brand image that you want to display! I think the best way to do it is to show something that is easily identified with your site. Maybe it’s the first letter of your blog name or, as in my case, it’s a picture that relates to your topic. As I mentioned, it’s a good idea to keep this consistent and use it as part of your broader blog strategy.

Hints for successful favicon use:

• Make sure, the icon file is called favicon.ico and it is placed in the root folder of your web server.
• Make sure, the path to the favicon in the header of your page is absolute, not relative.
• Don’t change your favicon very often. Use it as part of a branding strategy
• Pick an icon that stands out from the crowd

I’d love to see what you choose! Once you’ve picked an icon, leave a comment or send me an email and I’ll come have a look!

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Tags: favicon, branding, brand awareness, blog, blog tactics, business blog