JohannTheDog singled out as a powerful brand!

A couple of weeks ago, I was incredibly honored to have JohannTheDog featured on the Giant Squid Community Showcase Blog. It's a blog that highlights Giant Squid lensmasters and their amazing lenses.

This was an extra special honor. You see the driving force behind Squidoo is none other than online marketing guru extraordinaire, Seth Godin. Seth is the author of some of the best and most popular marketing books on the planet, including:

Purple Cow : Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
Word of Mouth Marketing : How Smart Companies Get People Talking
The Dip : A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

And he has a new book, being released on October 21st: Tribes : We Need You to Lead Us

I remember the first book that I read of Seth's. It was Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers into Friends, and Friends into Customers. I still have that book in my library today, and often refer to it to refresh my ideas and get some inspiration.

Seth's involvement in Squidoo was the main reason I decided to get involved in Squidoo, and utilize it as my vehicle for creating Squidoo lenses as educational pages in support of JohannTheDog.com. I have long admired Seth, his work, his intelligence, foresight and marketing savvy. And I immediately felt comfortable signing up with Squidoo, and believed that the site would stick.

So when we saw this very gracious post on Giant Squidoo Community Showcase that said 'a good example of a Giant Squid Lensmaster with a powerful brand is JohannTheDog,' I was incredibly honored.

To be recognized in this way by your peers, in a community you are involved in, is not only gratifying, but it's also an amazing confirmation that you are on the right track. And that, my friends, you just don't hear nearly as often as you should in life.

As with all honors, there come the skeptics. And this instance was no exception. Just after the post was announced on the Squidu forum, nice congrats from fellow Squidoos starting coming in through the forum post. But an interesting discussion about branding quickly ensued.

The skeptical question? In basic summation: 'Is a dog credible enough to be a brand?' And 'who is behind JohannTheDog?'

Good questions and ones I believe I answered. If you'd like to read a little on the friendly debate, head on over to the forum post - it's a nice little chat about branding, what people want and need, and providing them with the information, services and/or products they seek through a vehicle they enjoy.