Branding is a process by which both a brand and brand identity are developed. Doing this on the internet is very important and can be the difference between long term success and failure. In this article we will discuss how to brand ourself online and give you specific things you can do to do that.

1. Buy your name as your domain name. This is getting harder to do as more domain names are bought up, but you still have to try. Go for the dot-com version first and then work down to the dot-net, dot-biz names if they are taken. If your name is not available try and come up with something similar. JohnDoe might be taken, but how about John-Doe or I-Am-John-Doe or Team-John-Doe.

2. Get a professional logo and use it. This is going to be your header on every page you build. You are creating a memory and it starts at the top of the page.

3. Be consistent with layout and color. How many websites have you been to where the background color changes as you go from page to page. Or the font is different. Consistency in everything you do is important.

4. To brand yourself people need to know who you are. One of the best places to do that is at discussions forums. You can become a known entity and drive traffic to your website just by doing forum marketing correctly. This takes some time, but if you are helpful and offer quality information to the discussions you are involved in you are branding yourself with every forum post you make.

5. Understand that building yourself as a brand takes time. View it as building a house one brick at a time. Your bricks are the things you are doing. These are the basics of internet marketing. Blogging, social networking, article marketing, classified ads, ezine advertising, publishing a newsletter, traffic exchanges, and so on.

This is really about the number of impressions as well. When people see your banner over and over they get used to it and will check you out. When they read a great article you wrote they will go to your blog and if they feel welcome they will come back.

This is 5 basic things you can do, and should do, to brand yourself online. Branding yourself is one of the smartest things you can do and will pay off for you in future years.