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Put your best brand forward

Get the systems, secrets, and strategies to build, automate, and elevate your brand on the Web. Every Sunday at 5 PM, gain business, branding, and digital insights into current trends. Learn how to optimize your website, drive sales, increase organic search traffic, grow your email list, and more—from a brand designer and bootstrapped founder of an award-winning e-commerce brand. Let’s build!

Spoken Flames’ mobile ad outside
Featured Post

🚚 Your brand, offline... and on a truck?

Go big, or go back to FB ads: 5 things I’m learning from my truck ad in New York City Welcome back to The Brand Bloc, your free resource for building, automating, and elevating your brand on the Web and beyond. Double tap, scroll, swipe, swipe, like. No matter the social or digital platform, the actions (and the dopamine hits) are the same. Digital fatigue is real. Data shows that people spend nearly seven hours a day looking at screens. 📺💻🤳 And about 70% of people report experiencing burnout...

Cartoon duck counting money

Do we haaave to offer crazy high discounts for Black Friday? Welcome back to The Brand Bloc, your free resource to help you build, automate & elevate your brand on the Web. Today’s edition—sponsored by Spoken Flames—explores why (and if) Black Friday & Cyber Week discounts matter for your brand—with an example of a successful brand that (surprisingly) does not participate in the discount frenzy. Enjoy! Brand builders like you and I experience Black Friday differently. While most are on the...

Judgement being cast

Instagram’s recent announcement might (or might not) surprise you... They save the best video quality for the most popular content. It’s like high school all over again. The cool kids get all the cool things. And the IG algorithm is now the arbiter of cool. To be fair, the head of Instagram also justified that your video may render low-quality for end users with a slower internet connection. That’s reasonable. For a user with a weak connection, loading a low-quality video is a better user...

Crowd rushing through a store opening.

As a brand owner, you might have a goal to be featured in [insert dream publication here]. But have you thought through what it means when that day comes, and the orders rush in? After spending the last few weeks wrapping an office move, living out of storage and boxes, and milking that HGTV press feature I told you about last time... Well, that press hit, hit. At first, it sent more traffic to my online store. And I used the press piece to run ads, send emails, post organic, etc., etc. 📣📣...

Red, purple, and silver balloons with the logo: The Brand Bloc

Two of my favorite clients reached out to me this week. One to tell me how much she (and her customers) still love her branding—over 6 years after we first worked together. And another to inquire about expanding her designed marketing collateral into digital assets—over 7 years after we first worked together. What’s the common thread between these two brand owners? Years later, both have timeless brand designs that attract and resonate with happy customers. If you’ve never thought about your...

Side by side image comparison of a DIY product photo. Text: How it started, how it's going.

Welp, we all start somewhere. I’m embarrassed to look at (least alone, share) some of the earliest product images of my candle brand. 🫣 The lighting was bad. The angles and focus were off. The product didn’t look interesting. I remember once confidently sending a really bad photo to a retoucher and asking them to make it look “better.” The photo was so bad that they, in fact, could not make it look “better.” It was in that exchange I learned that even post-production retouching wizardry 🪄...

Example of content syndication with Spoken Flames candles

I’m not looking to repurpose this one content piece for over 30 days because I’m lazy. It’s because it’s what smart (and billion-dollar) brands, marketers, and creators do as part of a healthy, consistent, and strategic digital marketing presence. Some call it a content flywheel or pyramid. Others call it content syndication. You can (and should) do the same. So, this week, I’ll walk you through my strategy for creating this central piece of content and what I plan to do to promote or...

Customer review 5 stars with The Brand Bloc logo

This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a final rule that officially bans fake reviews and testimonials. I know what you’re thinking... Who on Earth would flat-out LIE and fake customer reviews? 😱 But two things: It’s more common than you think, and The ruling now outlines the types of reviews, review suppressions, websites, and even fake followers that count as the deceptive practices the Commission seeks to protect consumers from. So, that seemingly innocent filler review...

Video demo of the link in bio experience

The phrase “link in bio” has become part of our modern lexicon. You, or any creator or small business you know, can say these three magic words and immediately make someone stop scrolling and head to that tiny but powerful link in your social media bio. Because that’s just what a link in bio is: a clickable link in the bio section of a social media profile. This single link usually directs your audience to a landing page with additional content and links relevant to your prospective customer...

Woman looking around

My product-based business is international! I’ve expanded my award-winning sensory candle brand to Canada. While this incredible milestone wasn’t on my Bingo card for the business this year, I welcome the growth. I packed the orders and processed the payments. And then. It hit me. First, my e-commerce platform’s 1.5% currency conversion fee on top of the standard 3.6% merchant fee. That’s 5.1% already gone. These fees are on a wholesale order with a 50% markdown on retail value (due to the...