This week’s Brandsplat Video report episode covers jQuery, HTML-5, Super Bowl Commercials, Katie Couric and Bryant Gumble Discussing What is the Internet Anyway? Check it out! Or click here for more Brandsplat vids

This week’s Brandsplat Video report episode covers Hubspot.com, Analytics, Export.ly, and Keenan Cahill with David Guetta. Check it out! Or click here for more Brandsplat vids

Functioning with a teeny tiny view of the world with no relevance to what is actually happening on planet Earth is one of those common mistakes business blogs make quite frequently. And, man, is it frustrating. After all, you want to invite people into your little corner of the Earth, but you also want to be relatable to folks not in your inner circle. Non-stop navel gazing provides little or no insight and doesn’t encourage people from all walks of life to participate in your blog.

For an example of a blog whose brand stretches globally, we really love Nylon Magazine. The New York fashion mag has seen its share of creative shifts since it was born more than a decade ago. But today’s Nylon speaks the language of fashion all over the world. So it makes sense that their blog invites readers to send in photos of global graffiti art. Featured in photos, the blog segment is one of the site’s most popular and ingenious. Why couldn’t your blog about your homemade soap invite your users to send in videos of them using the products? Why couldn’t your travel blog invite readers to send in bizarre vacation photos? There’s no reason we all can’t take a cue from Nylon and inspire our readers to share their lives with us, too.

Another way to expand your blog’s reach is to take part in the conversations on people’s minds. Newsworthy topics and trends relevant to your brand should be incorporated in your blog’s language. Non-ranting, current-event-based blogs which address global concerns are a good way to get the conversation rolling. Just remember to stay off the preaching pulpit and to avoid yelling like some crazy person on The View. Check out Ecoki.com for an example of an issues-fueled blog that handles it with style intelligence and class.

Of course, engaging worldwide blog audiences makes sense in hopes of generating more revenue”¦ but it’s deeper than that. Global blogging and global marketing is now within our reach and will soon become the norm. Those stuck babbling about themselves will quickly find out how small their world has become.

This week’s Brandsplat Video report episode covers Getting a Million Dollars, Girl in a Fountain, and Mila’s Daydreams. Check it out! Or click here for more Brandsplat vids

This week’s Brandsplat Video report episode covers Twitter Heat Map, Verizon iPhone, Elvis, Bottom-Filling Beer Glass, and Brandsplat. Check it out! Or click here for more Brandsplat vids

Buzz. That’s what everybody wants. We Twitter endlessly. We update our blogs tirelessly. We send love notes to the media”¦ All in the name of buzz. Online buzz in particular has become the pot of gold at the end of the marketing rainbow. Many recent oft-cited success stories are inspiring tales of how a small-time company with a good idea exploded thanks to huge interest created online. So we keep chipping away in hopes of becoming a talked-about brand with a strong online presence. But does online excitement always translate to big sales?

The New York Times wondered this same thing over the weekend when discussing the recent Internet sensation “Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys.” The reality show from Sundance Channel won’t even air until December 7 but already has more than 160,000 fans on Facebook. In today’s world of TV indifference, these are huge numbers – especially when considering other cable reality shows like Bravo’s “Flipping Out” have about 50,000 fans.

“Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys” follows a straight girl and her gay best friend. While the subject has been covered to death in sitcoms and dramas, the series is the first reality show devoted to the topic. Apparently, something about the marketing or the premise has already spoken to TV fans even though they haven’t even seen an episode of the program. Sundance, naturally, is already doing a victory dance.

But we’d hold off on popping the champagne bottles just yet if we were you, Sundance. We’ve seen big-time online buzz build and swell but still fail to deliver the dollars over the past year. ABC’s “My Generation,” the documentary “Catfish,” the iTunes social flop Ping and the new Digg are just a few examples of lots of press coverage and chatter that didn’t pay off in the end. The reason? Well, we’re no psychics here, but we can guess that people simply didn’t like those things. Massive online buzz, while being the Holy Grail for marketers, is worthless if the product or business being promoted isn’t very good.

At Brandsplat, we’re all for anybody becoming the next online multi-media maven. The great thing about today’s landscape of digital media is that anyone can launch his or her own blogs and newsfeeds. With the right amount of promotion and gumption, these little blogs can become widely read and forwarded brand names in online media. So it struck us as odd when Glenn Beck, he of the ridiculously high rated Fox show and of the recent rally in Washington D.C., announced with his usual red-faced fanfare that he was launching a website a la The Huffington Post to serve as “news and opinion” (and by opinion he means his opinion) called The Blaze.

Beck, agree with him or not, is trying to establish himself as a brand name in conservative journalism – and he has the flock of sheep to prove that he’s capable of doing so. Our issue here is not with his politics but with the utterly whack name of his new website. To prove how uninspired a name The Blaze actually is, we’ve collected a few other, longer-established websites and media outlets from the Interweb that were called The Blaze first.

The Blaze, as it turns out, is a super popular moniker for radio stations. Country, alternative, hip-hop and classic rock stations all seem to favor the name. Poor Beck’s fans might be in for a surprise if they accidentally visit the wrong Blaze and wind up listening to the latest hit by T- Pain. From Tyler, Texas, to Chico, Calif., we dug up at least four radio stations dubbed “The Blaze.” Strange that Beck’s marketing folks didn’t catch this, especially seeing as he was discovered on morning radio. The biggest chuckle in the bunch definitely comes from down under, where The Blaze is a popular gay and lesbian news website. Visitors to this Blaze are greeted with a distinctly un-Red State view of a man’s behind in black underwear. And it doesn’t end there. We found a head shop, a strip club, a barbershop quartet newsletter (?) and we fondly remember it as the name of the school newspaper on the original 90210 run by that pesky Andrea Zuckerman.

We’re certainly not in the business of politics here at Brandsplat, but the lesson from The Blaze is a good one everyone, regardless of his or her field. Choosing our website and brand names is an important move that needs to be mulled over with careful consideration. Beck omitting his own name in the title somewhere in the website is a big mistake. Beck is a brand name already and leaving it out of the equation is a definite fumble. It is important to have consistent branding and thoughtful company names, especially in the era of mass Google confusion.

Now you tell us: What website names fail to hit the right marks? Blaze up our comments section below!

Online branding and a strong digital presence are on the top of every businesses marketing wish list. We’ve seen companies fail or flourish over the last decade because of their ability – or lack thereof – to tap into the digital world.

NBC, a channel which has taken more hits lately than “Sugar” Shane Mosley, is hoping to turn things around with an aggressive digital campaign aimed at creating positive buzz. The network has struck an exclusive deal with Microsoft Advertising covering two dozen massive digital platforms to get the word out about its upcoming fall season. Set to launch on Monday and run until the middle of more…

It is a fun little note for the history books that Facebook eclipsed Google as the most used site on the Internet.  For years, Google has pretty much gone unchallenged. Google is still the advertising god as they have a multitude of avenues to deliver adverts to the people. From Google Buzz and Gmail to Google Reader and more…

An interesting survey shows the top online brands and reveals what made them so. The three attributes the top 10 brands online share are:

• Trustworthiness
• Helpfulness
• Relevance

From Google and Sony to Amazon and Apple, the top brands online are brands that have reputations as companies who are trustworthy, helpful, and relevant. Does that describe you?

It’s clear that online branding has become one of the most important aspects of business in the 21st century. Google has a lot to do with that. Being the top resource for many consumers searching for information about brands online, Google has done a stellar job of positioning its own brand. Naturally, we trust Google as a resource for developing our own.

Amazon has become synonymous in recent years with e-commerce. There is no other e-commerce company that is as trusted as Amazon. Ebay may be a close second, but it still trails even though it did make the top 10 list. It isn’t far behind.

The leading social network, of course, is Facebook, followed by MySpace.

If you’re building your brand online then there is something to learn from this list. And it isn’t that you should be a search engine, a social network, an e-commerce or auction site, or a computer technology company. Rather, the lesson to learn is that no matter what niche you are in, it is important to build trust, be helpful, and establish yourself as relevant to consumers within your niche. If you can’t achieve at least one of those three attributes then you likely won’t be a brand that consumers will come to rely on.