Friday, September 30, 2011

ReBranding ScLoHo.. Stupid or Brilliant?


My wife said to me the other day, "You are nuts, don't listen to what Kevin says."

I had to ask her what she was talking about because, she just walked into the room and those were the first words out of her mouth.

Turns out she had just read what I posted on one of my other blogs earlier this week.

On Monday, I announced to readers and subscribers of my personal blog, ScLoHo's Really? that I was about to make a transition in my online activities. Read what I wrote there if you want.

Now my wife Kathy is a typical baby boomer who has her Facebook account and she has her Face to Face Life, and that about sums up her social networking.
Uh, don't go looking for a social media network called Face to Face Life. Face to Face life is what we did before the internet, and what most of us still do.

Anyway, here's the scoop:

This weekend I am launching a new website that will combine the 4 separate blog sites onto one website.

Blogger by Google has been my primary home for all of my blogs, even though I bought domains for each of them.

And I used to tell people to Google "ScLoHo" and you'll find 200,000 links to me.

Google "Scott Howard" and as of yesterday I was on the first page for my Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

Due to my presence in both the Social Media world as ScLoHo and the Face to Face Life as Scott Howard, I've been working at merging the two.

One of the key elements that I have learned since joining Cirrus is the importance of being found online when someone doesn't know your business name.

For those of you that remember phone books, ever try and find a plumber in the white pages?
Unless you know the name of the company, you're out of luck.

You'd look in the Yellow Pages.

Most of us look for answers by typing in keyword phrases until we find the answer we are looking for online via Search. We don't type in exact business names because we don't know until we search to see has the answers.

In many ways, Search Engines have replaced Yellow Pages.

This idea has been in my mind for a few years and as I take this last step (for now) it is the most aggressive change and required the most work from me, mainly due to having to learn more than I really wanted to learn about building a website on Wordpress.

As I have compared the Wordpress platform and support to what we offer at Cirrus ABS, I am now even a bigger believer in the Cirrus Content Management System.

One of the key elements that I have learned since joining Cirrus is the importance of being found online when someone doesn't know your business name.

The new website is already in use with 100 + articles available and next weeks updates are partially scheduled.

I am hoping not to break anything over the weekend. A few domain redirects, links to the archives which will still be hosted on blogger.com and a few more widgets, gadgets, gizmo's and gobbledegook, and all will be up and running.

ScLoHo is not going away as I explained to my wife, and I don't blindly follow the advice of Kevin or Seth, or anyone else, and I urge you to do your own exploring too as you continue on your Social Media Adventure.

:)

ScLoHo is Scott Howard, a Solutions Consultant with Cirrus ABS.

You can contact him here:

2 comments:

  1. I wish you all the best on this personal branding endeavor. Just to be clear though, I never told you to drop the ScLoHo, just make the focus Scott Howard because you already have ScLoHo handily won.

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  2. Yes, I know. And that's what I explained to the Mrs. too!

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