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This website, right now, has absolutely no way of making money. There are no ads in the sidebar, there are no hidden affiliate links and I have nothing to sell you. This lack of promotion isn’t coincidental: I have a genuine aim to help as many of you as I can succeed online and I’ll do that by focusing purely on the content that I put out there, and not the money I can make with it.
Now that we’re beginning a New Year, many people (myself included) feel like they are able to wipe the slate clean and try a ‘fresh start’ or a new strategy for a brand new year. My job right now is to catch you in this enthusiastic and energetic mood by showing you the one thing you need to do first: build your brand base online.
I only thought of the term “brand base” recently so that’s probably why you haven’t heard of it. To explain what a brand base in as short a sentence as possible, I would say a brand base is simply a ‘home’ for content around your brand online. Ideally, all of this content would be found on just one or two services, rather than across the web.
Over the last few years, more and more of my content has been moving online. I used to organise all of this content through folders and bookmarks in Firefox, but I recently began to realise how limiting this set-up is. Instead of keeping to this method, I’ve decided to register on a website I used for the first time over three years ago…Netvibes.
Netvibes is a custom homepage that allows you to customise thousands of modules to have an area online that is completely how you want it. I’ve tested countless alternatives such as iGoogle and have found nothing I prefer more over Netvibes.
Why Build a Brand Base?
Before I show you exactly what my own brand base looks like, I thought it would be a good idea to answer exactly why you should have one in the first place. As a webmaster / blogger, your goal is probably to grow your website as much as possible. Generally, the ‘spaces’ we need online to do such things include:
- A place to write content
- Email accounts
- Feed readers for other sites in the niche
- Reputation monitoring on personal and brand name terms
- Social networking sites (Twitter & Facebook)
- Task management and organisation
Because I was moving more and more online, I was finding that my checking of these sites was taking up more and more of my time. I had to head over to Google Reader to read other internet marketing blogs, Google Apps to read my ViperChill email and GoNutshell.com to get a hold of my task list.
As I worked this way for a few months, I quickly realised that I needed a better solution, and this is where Netvibes comes in. Netvibes simply allows you to access all of these websites and services in one place on the web. In fact, I can access half of these things all on the same page. It’s fantastic. Because I’m focusing all of these services and modules around one website / project, this inturn makes this new portal my brand base.
The benefits of having this brand base, are:
- Speed: I can now access all websites I browse around to in one place and save the time it would take for me to do that. I’m also checking email a lot less as I can see if there are any notifications right in front of me.
- Portability: Previously, I would have all of the websites that matter to me online organised in bookmarks in Firefox. Although there are backup services available, this isn’t very handy if I have to use someone else’s laptop or something happens to mine. With Netvibes, I will see the exact seem screen anywhere in the wrold and on any computer.
- Organisation: Not only is my new set-up better organised in terms of having everything in one place, but it really has everything I need. Now, when I ‘procrastinate’ and check my email, my to do list is sitting right in front of me, reminding me what needs to be done. Then, with one click, I can easily check who is talking about me or ViperChill around the web. It’s fantastic.
- Productivity: When I had all of my online services in different areas of the web, I could easily procrastinate for 15-20 minutes just going through all of them. When there’s over 20 links to sites like Gmail, Facebook, Digg and Twitter, it’s hard not to be distracted. Now that I have everything in front of me, there is simply no resource that I now have to click around for. It’s all in front of me and the next step is to simply take action.
If you now believe that a brand base is for you, then we’ll take a look at my setup and workout how you can get the same.
My Brand Base
Please note that while I’m using Netvibes for my own Brand Base, you don’t have to do the same. There are probably hundreds of websites which offer you similar functionality with a different look. Netvibes not only looks fantastic and has all of the modules I need, but is used by hundreds of thousands of people so I don’t think it will be disappearing anytime soon.
Page 1
I have three tabs on my Netvibes account, the first bringing you to the page you see below:
I decided to use the ViperChill background on Netvibes to give me a constant feel of the brand and the site that I work on. This first page is my ‘social’ area with two social network accounts and my two email accounts (one is below). I did, however, make sure to put my task list right in between the two social accounts so I never forget what I have to be working on.
The Twitter integration in Netvibes actually includes the very same functionality of Tweetdeck. In other words: it’s absolutely awesome. In fact, it’s so good that I have now uninstalled Tweetdeck from my Mac as this online version has some features even Tweetdeck was missing.
Page 2
The second tab on my Netvibes account brings me to my blog reading area:
I subscribe to about 15 blogs here and I’m so far enjoying the dramatic visual change compared to Google Reader. I love how easy it is to see the post frequency for the biggest blogs in my niche and of course, how easy it is to see when they have updated. Similar to Google Reader, Netvibes also shows the ‘unread’ count in the title so when I’m on a non-Netvibes tab, I can still see if new content has been posted.
I also love that having multiple accounts in one place means that I can easily share blog links on Twitter and Facebook or save them if I wish.
Page 3
My third and final tab on Netvibes is used for reputation monitoring:
Here I have simply added RSS feeds from places like Twitter Search and Google Blog Search. This allows me to track the web for mentions of myself, my brand, and anything else I want to track. It’s more important than ever to keep up to date on what people are saying about you so that you can respond and react as quickly as possible (where necessary).
For example, if someone purchased Cloud Living and wrote a negative review, I want to know about it. I want to help them out if I can and make sure the ‘negativity’ doesn’t spread too far. When deciding what to track, consider:
- Employee names
- Your name
- Brand names
- Product names
- Your competitors product / brand names
- Industry related topics
And anything else you feel people may be talking about. I call this area ‘Business’ but really think of it as my speaker from the web. The constant noise of what is going on around me.
What Is Your Set-Up?
I honestly believe that having this brand base set-up is going to make a big difference for me in 2010. I’ve already had some ideas of more things to add that are going to save me a lot of time. Please remember that if you like the idea of creating something like this, you could also try iGoogle or Pageflakes for competitive alternatives.
Now that I’ve shared what I’m using, I want to hear about you! What do you think of building a brand base? Do you like the way I have set mine up? Or, if this isn’t something for you, which services do you use for email, task management and so on while staying organised.
Together, you guys are far more intelligent and creative than me, so I look forward to the replies…
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I’ve setup feeds in Google blogsearch, alerts etc that monitor my brands. I read these through FriendFeed where I’ve setup a private room for these feeds. I also have setup Twitter lists of the blogs I read – I potentially miss posts but the way I see it, if a post is good enough it will be retweeted so I won’t mss anything.
I love the idea of using Friendfeed to manage those feeds. Exactly the kind of new thing that I wanted to read!
Thanks Anthony.
Great tip Glen!
I’ve actually been looking for a good way to keep my organizing to a minimum stress level, so this post was perfect timing
You mentioned you handled your bookmarks through netvibes too, is there any synchronization tools to firefox/chrome?
Cheers!
/Jonas
Hi Jonas,
I don’t really handle my bookmarks there, it’s more that the bookmarks I had were for all of the services that I can now access with Netvibes.
Thanks for the comment!
Jonas, have you tried delicious.com together with its Firefox plugin? I have the plugin installed on all my machines, which gives me a convenient way to keep my bookmarks stored remotely. It’s worth checking out if you haven’t done so before.
My blog is not big enough to cause negativity yet, but I mainly use iGoogle and Google Alerts. However, netvibes does seem much better. I’m going to start using it once I move this week and have to start using a laptop instead of my stationary box
I have the same problem just browsing the web for 20 minutes checking all my stuff. Then I tend to get even more distracted because the internet is a never-ending spiral of links where you go clickety click all day.
Great tip! Monitoring your own brand and monitoring your field is very important. I do something similar to you, I use Tweetdeck and Google Reader alongside with Google Alerts. All in all I get a good picture of what is happening in the field plus who is talking about me. All the best in 2010!
You know, I used to use Netvibes a few years ago, too. Glad to see it listed here as you’ve given me a reason to resurrect my Netvibes page. I know that I need to be more organized this year so this is very helpful for that.
I find that keeping IE open with tabs for each daily bookmark also improves my productivity as the information is right in front of me. I’ve also discovered Teux Deux (http://teuxdeux.com) which is a very simple online todo list.
Thanks,
Karen
Because I’m rather new to business online and blogging, this is one area I have been struggling with. My goal in the first months of 2010 has been to organize everything to become more efficient and spend less time trying to put everything together.
I’ll definitely try this out and let you know how it works. This sounds great.
Thanks for this. I certainly will have a look at it.
Hello VC. I’ve been reading your posts avidly since I came across you via Twitter. I’m merely a passive observer for now, but certainly the mobility you have is exactly what I crave.
An interesting gadget for igoogle that you may not get in netvibes is the google insights tracker, which will keep help you track search trends and top searches over a period of time.
Hey Glen!
Totally great post. I’m going to set up Netvibes this week, it just seems so much easier to have everything on one page instead of all these different windows/passwords/applications. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Glen.
I have a few websites that I blog on, not to mention a few email addresses, so this is something that can really benefit me. Right now, the only system I have in place is creating limits on how many times I can log into accounts like facebook, twitter, etc… It would be a lot more efficient if they were all in one place.
Hi Glen, right now I don’t have a single online place for all my activities. I use Google Reader to read my fave blogs. I also have Google Alerts integrated into the Reader for some of the topics I want to monitor. My Twitter and Facebook accounts are pretty much separate too. It makes sense to integrate things into one neat online base. thanks for the tips.
What a great tip. I’m definitely going to consider this Glen. Appreciate you bringing that to my attention mate. I will keep you posted on how this works for me.
DD
Hey Glen!
This is awesome, mate. I can’t wait to switch to netvibes so I don’t have to have 5+ tabs open to run all of my online stuff. It will streamline the process so much and cut down on my wasted time.
Thanks for the tip!
Hey Glen,
I just recently stumbled upon your blogs, and they are both proving to be invaluable. This idea you presented today will definitely be a huge time saver and a great convinience on both a private and a professionell level. I’d actually never really bothered to look into Netvibes, and as it turns out, it provides exactly what I’ve been looking for.
I have no interest (yet) in having a public presence on Netvibes, but it’s probably going to replace my feed reader, my twitter client, and little helper programs like my planner as well. Will be interesting to see where this goes.
Wow, I struggle with being organized and was searching for some type of solution. Thanks for the tips. This will help as I try to make my site successful this year.
Hi Glen. Thanks for the post. I have the same issues of moving from a variety of websites just to keep up with all the things I read and follow. I tried to use Yahoo to “consolidate” but I seemed to be missing something. You made me realize what that was…Tabs! Based on your post Netvibes could be what I was waiting for. Thanks again for making me aware of it. I started following your posts in November 2009 (followed a link from Problogger) and I am becoming a huge fan. Keep up the good work!
Hey Glen
I have been an avid user of netvibes for quite sometime and actually looked into to doing this with my blogs just last week but forgot about it.
Thanks for the post I will definitely be trying it now
Andy
Wow, Netvibes/Pageflakes looks very useful! Thanks for posting about this, I’ll give that a try right away and declutter some of my apps and tabs I almost constantly have open.
Cheers,
Shane
Cheers man, greatly appreciated reading this and am off to set up my own brand base – great advice man, I wish you all the success with viperchill in the future.
Talk about excellent timing! I registered a Netvibes account early last week while personally debating the whole “brand base” issue (great term, BTW). I’m still muddling through its initial setup as I decide how to make sense of over a decade’s worth of assorted online mischief.
For quite a while I’ve struggled, as probably many others also have, with organizing (let alone growing) a one-stop resource. There’s certainly no shortage of DYIers like me, who could recount horrible tales of unreliable domain hosts and worse. Netvibes looks like it’s going to take the headache out of at least developing a workable hub.
Everyone is talking about excellent timing, and I won’t disagree. I was thinking about this too (New Year effect on all of us maybe).
I like how Netvibes integrates (or seems to, I’ve never used it) with the other sites better/easier than Google.
Question- Is Netvibe’s Twitter app better than Hootsuite. Not to sound like I’m pushing it or anything, but so far it’s the best twitter app I’ve found for scheduled posting, brand tracking, click-rate tracking, RSS feed aggregating, and the cherry on top, the bookmark drag on toolbar. The Firefox bookmark can auto-short a page/link your viewing to share with the world, schedule it to anytime u want or auto-post, then track click-rate later on.
If Netvibes is better, I’ll switch.
Hi Arsene,
I am afraid Netvibes’ Twitter gadget is not better than Hootsuite. I’d say that functionality equals to that of the Twitter website interface. Actually, I can’t find “Tweets mentioning *me*”. And Hootsuite seems to be the best by far.
However, I am happy with my Netvibes account, it gives me a pleasant “all in one” feeling.
I will give it a try. Thanks for Sharing Glen.
this is really useful Glen – I had thought about getting everything to one place, but wasn’t sure how. Thanks and happy adventures !
Jen
So I read you post and must say Netvibes sure looks better than it did a few years ago. I setup my account and created a base like you described. Having everything in one place seems great. Maybe I can stay a bit more focused.
I’ve added Dropbox into my base, so I can share files between my various locales — sometimes in the office, on the laptop at home/coffeeshop, or in my home office.
Great advice, though. Thanks.
That’s a great addition Jason, I’m glad you’re making the most of the service.
You’re very welcome, and thanks for the comment!
Nice post, Glen.
I use Google Reader for feeds and brand management but I like the way how you have set up netvibes. It is always better to keep everything in one place.
Will try out netvibes as it sure does seem like a time saver.
-Ramkarthik
Great info Glen! I have never used NetVibes but am headed there to check it out now. Thanks!
What a find, v-chill and u, Glenn; an inspiration with such wisdom and knowledge, to boot! Looking forward to adding YOU to my netvibes page.
Currently using a simple yet effective enough for my needs app called teuxdeux.com (to-do) and HighRise for contact and f/u mgmnt.
Keep it comin’!
I love this post Glen! I’m to try Netvibes out. I was using the system you described – bookmarks, RSS reader, etc. The one thing I do have that’s slightly different is a piece of software called Action Outline (http://www.actionoutline.com/). Essentially, you can store info/notes in a tree/outline structure. I use it for goal planning and jotting down random ideas, and coming up with an actions list. Not sure if Netvibes does this, but it will still be nice to have everything in one place.
I haven’t heard of Netvibes until now.. Definitely going to check it out!
My setup on my mac.
I use spaces 2 down, 3 across
The top left is my home base where its always set to iGoogle. I have my rss reader, gmail, task list, notes calendar, weather etc.. on it. I LOVE this setup!
THEN on the bottom left corner of my spaces I have another window always running in Safari that only has 4 tabs running: Google Calendar, CoTweet, Hootsuite, facebook and Basecamp.
I don’t need those things always in front of me and if they were, it would be distracting. Thats why I love expose and spaces!
I have just signed up to netvibes, thanks for the insight.
Hopefully it will increase productivity and decrease web distractions by focusing everything in one place.
Great offerings as ever Glen
Wow, I had no idea something like this existed. It seems to make perfect sense. I can’t wait to try it out.
For task management I use Things (http://culturedcode.com/things/). It is a one time fee of $50, but so worth it. The interface makes managing tasks, projects, and ideas so easy and it syncs with my iPhone perfectly for when you are on the go.
You should author the term brand base on Wikipedia…
I would love to but I do not think there are enough mentions of the term around the web. One day?
Glen, I thought I’d give NetVibes a whirl as I recognize the problem you are solving here.
However setting up the tabs is crawling – it keeps complaining about slow scripts etc. I used to get annoyed with this kind of thing the last time I tried to focus all my stuff (using Google).
Does it speed up once you set it all up? I don’t want to gain in convenience but lose in staring at an egg timer.
Good luck with your completely outrageous goals in 2010, btw.
Hi Monevator,
I have not had such issues with them. Maybe you want to try another browser and see if that helps? If not, I would get in touch with them. Even if it puts you off the service too much to use it, at least you’ll help someone else down the road.
- Glen
Thanks Glen, I’ll try it on Firefox.
Thanks! This is a fantastic way to stay focus. I’ve been thinking about how I can organize myself.
“Brand Base” I like it. I love Firefox. I look forward to reading more of your posts.
Useful post indeed:)
Glen, I think I’m having too much fun on your site today. Thank you for another great post. I’ve dedicated this month to reorganizing my business and I plan to head over to Netvibes. Thanks!
[...] to Glen from ViperChill.com, I came across a very handy tool that I’ve been using everyday since the beginning of the [...]
[...] The Very First Thing You Should Do in 2010 [...]
This is the second time I’ve read this. The first time I wasn’t convinced but despite my plans to reduce time doing stuff I shouldn’t be I’m still at it and switiching between tabs on Firefox like it’s going out of fashion. I like that the to do list is top center right where it should be. Now I wonder how long it will take me to get it all set up…
PS. Hehe, hope my blog is one of the 15… There’s an article up there about improving relationships on it right now with a nod to Valentine’s Day although it’s not just about romantic love. I just read elsewhere on ViperChill something about you going through a lot of change in that area so thought it might interest you. Just trying to return the favour in some small way:)
[...] a side-note, at the start of the year I wrote about how I use Netvibes for pretty much everything. I had a number of problems with the [...]
Uao, I’ve been working to set up internet business 5 months ago, when I got fired… I have different emails, websites to get sources, etc… Today, you gave me the solution to manage all that, I never thought nor I did know about Netvibes !!! Did I bookmark ViperChill ? YOU BET !!!
Still travelling ? Let me know if you jump close to Geneva, we go for a drink 
This looks very good, i’m guessing all the passwords you enter in it are fully secure? I’ll check it out, looks like it’ll save a lot of time.
OMG! I’m so glad I decided to read this article next. I was just wondering if there was a service that allows me to do this because I really get tired of jumping from website to website. I’m about to signup and try it out right now.
Excellent- it totally makes sense and will surely increase productivity. Great post, thanks!