This guest post is from Ben Johnson of Logoinn, a custom logo design service provider based in UK.

Your logo is the proverbial “calling card” for your business. The appearance, style and design of your business logo will be responsible for the all-important first impression to a potential customer or client.

Understanding the importance of your business logo, you may wonder what you should have and what you should include within the design of that logo. This article provides tips and pointers on what type of logo you need to have for your business enterprise.

Logo as an Iconic Representation

When you are considering what type of logo will be most suitable for your own business, you can learn a good deal from those very successful logos that have really proven successful over time. Some logos have become so widely recognized that they are iconic.

Examples of iconic logos include the Coca-Cola logo, the Starbucks logo and many other logos that have been around for a long time that have become a part of the consciousness of consumers from all parts of the world.

You can take tips and cues from these logos when it comes to the decision making process associated with your own business logo. For example, these logos have common factors and elements that you can translate into your own logo design efforts.
For example, these iconic logos have clean and clear design concepts, have basic color schemes and convey a sense of what the business is about.

Take Practical Considerations into Account

In addition to taking a look at what other successful businesses have done in the way of logos, you want to clearly take in account practical considerations. For example, want to make sure that your logo appropriately conveys at least an indication of the products or services that you are offering through your business venture. A logo that doesn’t convey a sense of your business type will become ineffective in branding at best and a devastating error in the worst-case scenario.

You also need to ensure that your branding devices appeal and attract the specific market niche that contains the specific consumer group who will be most interested in doing business with your firm or company.

Simple Is Better

When selecting a logo design, keep in mind that a clean and uncluttered look is the best selection and the best choice for your operation.

With a clean, clear and uncluttered logo, consumers will more readily connect with your business. A quicker, sounder connection increases the number of customers or clients that your firm or company will do business with both in the short and the long term.

Know Your Industry

While you definitely do not want to copy another business’s logo design concept, it can help you to analyze what other businesses in your specific industry are doing in the way of logos, branding and related issues. Some themes are commonplace and suitable within a specific industry. Therefore, it likely will behoove your business to incorporate these themes into your own efforts at designing the most effective logo for your venture.

This is a step that a professional design firm will undertake as part of its own effort at developing the most effective and appropriate logo for your own business enterprise.

Final Lines

If you take the time and make the effort to consider the factors in this article, you will be in a better position to understand what type of custom logo will not only be the most suitable, but also most effective for your business venture. You will be laying the groundwork for a successful and profitable business, the groundwork that will serve you well not only today but as your business grows into the future.

• 64 B2B Marketing Tools and Resources
• Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words: No preparing to die… just to know the difference between lay and lie (not included… just had to rhyme). The Princess Bride, like Copyblogger says, icky title — great movie.
• Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples
• GovTwit Directory: List of government peeps who use Twitter. I worked for US government right out of college. Wonder if I could’ve Twittered? Probably from home and not work. Didn’t find any from my agency in list. Nice name… “GovTwit.”
• Comment Forms Designs: Nice collection. Sure makes mine feel so 1990s.
• 2008 Eddies: Edublog awards.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Cake Wrecks: I could spend too much time on this blog.
• Coffee Art [Link: Nancy Duarte]
• 6 EXTREMEly overused game titles: Good stuff. I’d add “Deluxe.”
• Best Free Games to Play This Holiday: Games are a wonderful way to spend holiday time especially when playing with family.
• jackassletters.com: Real letters. Real replies.
• Top 12 Tech Embarrassments in 2008.

In all these years, I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything about starting a blog. Someone emailed me asking how to get a blog and start blogging. So here you go.

There’s an easy way and there’s a hard way.

The Easy Way

Here you just fill out a form, make a few choices, and you’re in business. This solution uses a developer-hosted solution. That means the company or developer of the blog application hosts the software and blogs. These require no installation and minimal set up (after all, your blog needs a name or something). My first blog took the easy way approach using blogger.com.

Advantages

• Easy.
• Fast.
• Painless.
• No tech knowledge needed.
• Free or cheap.

Disadvantages

• At the mercy of the host’s server, which hosts thousands of other blogs.
• No personal domain name. Sure, you can pick a name. But instead of www.meryl.net, you get meryl.bloggingservice.com.
• Risk business reputation. Businesses without their own domain name communicate they’re cheap and not serious about building the business.

Easy Way Blogs (known as developer-hosted)

• Blogger.com: URL is in the form of yourname.blogspot.com. My first blog used Blogger.com.
• WordPress.com: URL appears as yourname.wordpress.com. This blog runs on WordPress. Offers paid upgrades.
• TypePad: From SixApart, the folks behind MovableType. URL is yourname.typepad.com.
• Other developer-hosted blogs.

The Hard Way

This takes more work and may require hiring a pro to help you through the whole process of…

1. Registering a domain.
2. Creating a design (or creating a template from your site’s design to work with the blogging application). Sure, you could use the free templates for starters, but many spam-like blogs use these templates and they may turn away visitors at first glance. Plus, you lose out on branding opportunities when using a template.
3. Installing the blogging application.
4. Adding plug-ins to make it easier for you to manage.
5. Helping you get started, if needed.

I run this blog on WordPress and Bionic Ear Blog on MovableType.  They both have strengths and weaknesses.

Advantages

• Branding.
• Easy to remember domain name.
• Builds credibility.
• Less blog downtime than a hosted blog solution — depends on your web site’s host.

Disadvantages

• Not free. Factor in the costs of buying a domain name, signing up with a host provider, and creating a design (if you don’t use templates).
• Not easy.
• Not fast UNLESS you already have a domain and a Web site. Then you just need to install the app with your current design.
• More work in maintaining: Software upgrades, plug-in updates, etc.

Hard Way Blog Apps (known as user-hosted)

• Movable Type
• WordPress.org
• Drupal
• Other user-hosted blog software.

Of course, businesses need a valid reasons for starting a blog and determine its purpose before running with it. Is a Blog Right for Your Business? Part I and Part II.

Today we have our first guest post in the blog birthday bash celebration to give Meryl almost a month off from blogging (well, someone has to post the entries and the prizes as I have no fingers). Yuwanda Black of Inkwell Editorial and Meryl have lightly crossed paths, but they finally connected when she interviewed Meryl for Yuwanda’s jam-packed newsletter for writers.

Since then, they’ve stayed in touch and read each other’s blogs. She’s the first contributor to meryl’s notes blog 8th birthday celebration.

This post’s prize: Two full copies of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger. My Magic Farm review. To win, post a comment in this entry of at least 30 words (to ensure they’re valuable to readers) by June 6.

All yours, Yuwanda!

7 Things You Must Know Before Moving Your Blog

I recently migrated my blog from Blogger to Wordpress – with disastrous results. I’m now moving it again — to my own hosted domain. If you’re thinking about moving your blog from one spot to another, here are seven things to keep in mind.

1. Back Up Everything: This is obvious, but I wanted to state it and get it out of the way first. I usually save about a week’s worth of posts. But, this process has taught me to back up everything on my own system.

The chances of large blogging platforms like Blogger or Wordpress losing your posts forever are nil. However, just recently, I was relaying my story to a new client who noticed my blog was down and she said that a few years ago, she’d lost about a year’s worth of posts from a large company — and they were never able to recover them.

Lesson Learned: Don’t rely on a blog hosting company not to lose your files. Back them up yourself.

2. Choose a Blogging Platform Wisely: I’m not slamming any platform – just relaying what happened to me that turned me off free blog hosts.

I migrated from Blogger to Wordpress on 30 April 2008. On 19 May, I logged on to this notice from Wordpress: “This blog is inactive.” And, nothing more -– just a white screen. I received a notice from Wordpress when I logged into my control panel that said, “Confirmation required: Your blog is inactive. Please contact us to confirm your account details.”

After contacting them and waiting almost a full day for them to get back to me, the problem still wasn’t resolved. The next day, on 2- May, I received the following email (after two more interactions): “Hi, Your blog was made inactive because it broke the Terms of Service. One or more of the following apply: . . . ”

The email went on to list four different scenarios — none of which I thought applied to my blog. I wrote back asking if they could tell me EXACTLY which Terms of Service rule I had broken. As of this writing (20 May in the evening), I’m still waiting for a response.

Bottom line: I’ve been offline now for two full days — and still don’t know if my blog will ever be live again.

Lesson Learned: Read the terms of service diligently, and scour forums to see if you can find out more about how quick a company is to take you offline without giving you a chance to correct your mistake.

3. If You’re a Business, Act Like It: That means investing in your business. After this debacle, I decided to have a professionally designed blog hosted on my own domain.

My business is at the point where my blog is an integral part of how I relate to my audience — hence, produce certain streams of revenue. Therefore, I can’t afford to break a Terms of Service rule, be taken offline with no clue as to what I did wrong, then wait for someone to get back to me.

Wordpress is a free blogging platform. So, I don’t blame them for not rushing to my rescue, so to speak. As an online freelance writing business though, my blog is crucial to ebook sales, my writing history, links to other sites and so on.

I blame myself for this mostly because I vacillated between going with another free blogging service or getting my own host. Trying to save a few dollars, I made the unwise choice.

Lesson Learned: Do it right the first time — especially if you can afford to (and I could have).

In short, if your blog is integral to successfully running your business, treat it like that and have it professionally designed and hosted on its own domain.

Two Things You Must Do to Hire a Professional to Design Your Blog

4. Research Blogs You Like: Spend some time scouring other blogs you like, then write down what you want. A design is only going to be as good as what you relay to your designer (I wish I could get some of my clients to understand this about writing, but I digress).

This is where most of small business owners go wrong (and I’m soooo included in this bunch). We just want to outsource a project and have it done. Then, when we’re unhappy, we blame the designer. This is partly our fault. I’d even go so far as to say largely our fault.

Get a good list of 5 or 10, then you can proceed to the next step, which is . . .

5. Write Out a Blog Design: It took me about an hour to write down what I wanted then forward it to the companies I targeted. Over about the course of a month, I had been bookmarking blogs I liked. I then went back to those to write out exactly what I wanted.

Some particulars I requested were a three-column design, a 10-point Arial font; a white background with navy (to match my website). I went column by column explaining to the designer exactly what I wanted and where. I also listed the plugins I wanted and even the graphics.

Note: As I had been thinking about getting my blog professionally designed for months, I was able to be pretty specific. If you are truly lost, your designer can make recommendations. But remember, they don’t know your business like you, the purpose your blog serves for you and how your customers relate to your site.

All of this information has to come from you. So, while it may take a while to figure it all out, it is well worth the investment. It is, after all, an investment in your business.

6. Get Bids: I contacted a few companies and ultimately decided to go with one whose work I had been familiar with for about a year, and whose business owners I knew to be fair and professional from our interactions online.

My hope is to be up and running by the end of the first week of June.

7. Keep Your Old Blog Updated: For a full quarter (three months) after your new blog is up and running, constantly update your old blog. You probably have some search engine recognition behind it, so continue to capitalize on that until your readers have gotten used to looking for you in your new home.

And, not for nothing, just in case there are glitches with your new blog, you’ll still have an active blog up and running until all is smooth sailing in your new home.

Good luck!

About the Author: Yuwanda Black is the voice of InkwellEditorial.com, a business portal for creative freelancers. She is the author of eight e-books, the most recent of which is How to Make $250+/Day Writing Simple, 500-Word Articles. She continues to blog at InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com until her new blog home has been established.

The messages many sites send when they use gray text on a white background is, “We don’t want you to read our content,” “Our content isn’t worth your time,” and “We want you to struggle reading our content because we think black is boring.”

#333333, #666666, #999999, and #cccccc (various shades of gray) are almost black, but not as good as black. Those sites don’t make this list.

It’s an epidemic that I alone can’t stop.

To reward those sites doing it right, they get a mention and a link here. Add your site to the comments section. However, we will check every link. If a site’s text hides in a fog, it will disappear.

Note — this only looks as the contrast between text and background — not the font choice, font size, text formatting style, or design.

1. Adversity University Blog
2. Be the Story
3. Blogcritics
4. Bob Bly
5. Book Marketing
6. The Book Sistah
7. Caroline Middlebrook
8. Chronicles of a Mompreneur
9. D. Keith Robinson
10. Dosh Dosh
11. Geekpreneur
12. Global Neighbourhoods
13. The Golden Pencil
14. Graywolf’s SEO Blog (yeah, even the guy with “Gray” in his name passed!)
15. GTO Management
16. How Not to Write
17. InternetVIZ
18. ISIPP
19. Melle.ca
20. Men with Pens
21. Molly
22. Niroze
23. PoeWar Writer’s Resource Center
24. The Program Witch Pages
25. Sparkplug CEO
26. Stowe Boyd
27. Strategic Public Relations
28. SuccessCREEations
29. Verge New Media
30. Writer’s Helper

You wouldn’t believe how many sites I looked at before my eyes begged me to stop. List is disappointingly short.

Moral: Black on white is NOT boring. It’s readable.

P.S. I skipped those with different colors because they may not be readable to those with various forms of color blindness.

Although Twitter hasn’t done much for my writing business, it keeps me in touch with friends and colleagues. It did contribute to my previous post. I decided to ask twitterville what they did whenever they become lethargic when they need to write. It worked well.

As much as I’d like to regularly ask questions, overdoing it could lead to the opposite results.

Also picked up a few more tips — in addition to the seven tips already posted — to make Twitter work for you.

1. Pick the right name that’s short as possible and stick with it.
2. Take care in using Twitter tools like Twhirl or else you won’t get work done.
3. Ask open-ended questions.
4. Skip the “tile” for the background image in your design unless you like to make people dizzy or it works (but very few people make it work).

Most importantly, keep participating (already mentioned in the first seven twitter tips). Twitter doesn’t work if you sit there hoping someone will @you.

That name thing came from a lesson learned. First, I signed up on twitter as “ContentMaven” since Meryl was taken. After using twitter for a few days, I realized that people might not know who I was as my name showed up no where.

Sure, the URL to my Web site was there, but you have to go to that person’s twitter page to see it. Besides, we don’t always pay attention to URLs. I changed the name to “MerylKEvans” since most people used first and last names. Another dumb move, but too late to change again.

Problems…

1. Many people misspell “Meryl.”
2. They might not notice the “K” in there. Call me weird, but I need my K! My middle and maiden names both start with K and “Meryl Evans” looks like it’s missing something.
3. It’s long for remembering and typing @name on a phone or without checking twitter.
4. Names count in the 140 character count when people @respond to you.

Changing your name is almost like starting over. So, pick the right name and as short as possible.

What twitter tips have you picked up?

I survived my first Writing Blog March Madness match up. However, it was no easy win so advancing rounds will be nail-biters. As if the first one wasn’t.

Community: The weakest spot in this blog is the lack of community. John’s right about that and it has puzzled me. For a while, I tried posing open-ended questions to invite comments. That didn’t work. I stopped because the blog entries looked pitiful having a question with no comments.

Gaming: I was relieved that John realized the gaming section was separated out. I worried he’d think I had something irrelevant mashed in with writing and business. I broke out gaming as much as I could from a technical standpoint (if you go through posts by clicking “next” and “previous,” you’ll see the games entries.). I was going to set up a different site for gaming, but as Mark of TheDiamondGames pointed out … meryl.net is established. Why start from scratch (in terms of SEO and ranks)? I thought he had a good point and took the route that I did.

Design: When I worked with Blue Flavor on this site’s design, we tried to make the site feel professional yet personal. With this design, I could stand to look at my own site… for the first time ever.

Usability & Navigation: The reason I provide a summary is based on my experience. I became frustrated with scrolling through some bloggers’ long entries and thought scanning ‘n clicking would be better than scrolling. But I could be wrong. What say you? I’m willing to change this and consider any other annoyances.

Purpose: I’ve always admitted that my blog has never been niche-based. It’s evolved over the years. I don’t think I can do better here unless I pick a niche.

Personality: I don’t want this blog to be about me, me, me. In promoting the business side of things, I try to show what’s in it for the prospect. In writing blog entries, I try to provide information you can use and not make it about my opinions. Personality matters as it gives the blog life, so I try to do that without crossing the line or getting too personal. Some things shouldn’t be out there for the world to see.

Content: Whew. John captured it, “She has a nice habit of giving tips and then illuminating them with examples from her own experience.” I’ve learned well from others’ examples plus examples help show instead of tell.

What can I do better so you leave this blog glad that you spent a little time reading it? How about enticing you to leave comments. What compels you to leave comments on a blog? That’s the missing link here.

The biggest reason I’m afraid to give presentations is fear of not being able to interact with the audience. My lipreading skills are imperfect and I don’t want to frustrate the audience by repeatedly asking, “What?” when they ask questions. A blog doesn’t have that problem and I respond to almost all comments — some are in private. But the interaction isn’t happening.

You’d think after eight years of blogging that I’d know the answer?

I admire John for taking the time for doing in-depth reviews of 32 blogs and including mine. Thank you, John.

Lest you think this is a brownnosing post — it will most likely not even be covered in the next round as I should have at least five posts by then. I want to understand how to improve on the weak areas. Who better to ask than you?

37signals asks eight questions before, during, and sometimes after working on a project or task. These questions work well for writers and other freelancers. Those of us who work solo rarely have anyone to check with us to make sure we’re on the right track.

So we need to help ourselves figure out if we’re on the right track with a task, project, client. Questioning also helps us gain credibility with clients because we might recommend a faster or better way of doing something or provide insight.

37signals asks the following questions. I’ve added notes to show how it affects writers. I’ll use a Help project I’m working on for a client’s web site as the example.

• Why are we doing this? To help users understand what the site is about and how to use it.
• What problem are we solving? Providing answers to user questions in how to modify their accounts and use the various features. Without the Help, they might spend too much time figuring out something or abandon the web site.
• Is this actually useful? While the web site’s design tries to make things obvious to users, it’s not always possible for them to figure out things without a little direction.
• Are we adding value? The current Help also has special sections for advertisers, product managers, and contributors. I’m breaking out the advertisers and product managers sections and moving them elsewhere. These have little value to the consumers.
• Will this change behavior? Not all writing will change behavior like interface design. In this case, the Help will guide the users to take the right steps to complete their tasks instead of taking the longer route.
• Is there an easier way? Yes and no. The Help uses a wiki. Though I’m not crazy about using a wiki, it has advantages over going another route. One, it would take longer to incorporate it into design based on the current goings-on. Two, the site wants to build a strong community and enabling them to update the Help will support the community concept.
• What’s the opportunity cost? This is why a wiki is a better way to go. the cost of integrating the Help with the design would be higher and take longer. Maybe after finishing the Help, we can integrate it into the design better.
• Is it really worth it? If done right, yes. Some sites have terrible Helps and they make more work for the user.

Early links. Spring break.

• Loads of offline resources for design inspiration.
• TypeFlash: Enter text, pick a typeface, modify it, and have fun. My youngest kept wanting to return to this site to see his name in different designs and colors. I told him we have lots more to explore!
• Four words that prove how difficult the English language is. How do you pronounce ghoti (hint: not goat-tee).
• Perfect for my husband and my oldest… find everything you lose with Smart Goggles [Link: Guy Kawasaki]
• 55 Ways to Have Fun with Google: Free ebook or buy the tree version if you want it in print. [Link: Steve Bass]
• Google Logo Rejects. [Link: Steve Bass]

Go Eagles! Beat Tennessee!

• Freelance Writing Fees: Anne Wayman has great series of articles to help writers with their fees. Unfortunately, writers won’t find a straight answer and it’s up to us to figure out our fees. But resources like this can help with the process.
• 70 logo design resources: I love this stuff. It includes books, articles, blogs, and tutorials.
• Visuwords: Online graphical dictionary.
• Uniqlo Grid: Great time waster… don’t go there if you’re busy. Click How to Play to get the details. Just enter a nickname and click Join Now to start.
• GuessTheSpot.com: Can you figure out the famous location or building from an aerial view? [Link: Steve Bass]
• Snopes page on the 9-letter word that appears in the below video.