Welcome to the wonderful month of May. You may have suffered through some April showers, but we all know that those are supposed to bring May flowers. In the world of the Internet, it seems that flowers are all related to blogging. Here are some great posts rounded up from the ‘sphere this week.

Courtney Tuttle says that that we should consider lead blogging, instead of the conventional route of setting up ads that direct your blog visitors away from your site. Manage those contacts and sell to them again and again.

Dharmesh Shah has a guest post at Shaun Low‘s site. He says that hates blogs that are too cluttered and filled with countless widgets. As such, he reminds us to clean up our blogs to provide a better user experience. Get rid of useless widgets folks.

RT Cunningham of Untwisted Vortex has a useful post that explains why your WordPress blog isn’t receiving pings. There could be more than one possible cause, but RT goes through many of the usual suspects.

Yaro Starak is living the dot com lifestyle, taking his online business with him as he travels around the world. If you want to achieve the same level of freedom, you’ll want to read his 5 tips for success when traveling with your business. This includes mobile blogging.

Scott Young not only defines what it means to be a geek, but he also explains why you should be a geek. It’s not only important to be passionate, but you need to be passionate about something a little more obscure to be a real geek.

The law of colour when it comes to branding says that you should use unique colours to define your brand and if you have a competitor you should use the opposite colours. A good example of this is Coke uses predominately Red where Pepsi uses Blue. If you are in a saturated market where the primary colours are used considering using newer vibrant colours that are not being used.

When choosing colours remember that colours have meaning and should fit your target market or niche. Wikipedia has a great colour keyword chart that will provide you with a way to determine which colours will best fit your company. As a rule of thumb try not to choose more then 3 colours and try to ensure they complement each other. If you have one colour in mind but can not find a complementary colour you can use a free tool like the Behr Colour Smart tool.

Once you have chosen your company colours be sure that you are consistent with them. Find the exact colours and be sure that all mediums you display your company colours on are the exact colours you picked. The colours you choose will be etched as part of your branding into your customers and future customers brains if done right.

What colour does Starbucks use? What colours do Tim Horton use? What do these colours say about their company?

A cartoon modified by an Anonymous artist which was orginally created by xkcd.

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

Whether you are trying to promote your blog or your business, the concept of branding is of paramount importance. You need to separate yourself from your competition and be recognized as a distinct brand. When you see the stylized blue globe, you automatically think of AT&T. When you see the swoosh, you automatically think of Nike. This is the result of effective branding and a great logo. This is why people are willing to pay so much money to get a great logo.

The trouble is that many people don’t consider the ramifications of their logos. They may like the appearance of a logo and think that it suits their business, company, or organization perfectly, but you have to assess your logo from every which angle and look for input from several different sources to ensure that you are not missing out on something. Just as some slogans translate poorly into other languages, different logos can represent a variety of things in different cultures.

When the Office of Government Commerce (British Government) commissioned the creation of a logo, they came up with this seemingly benign logo that is just a stylized version of OGC melded together. However, when you rotate the logo 90 degrees, it takes on the appearance of a stick figure masturbating. Naturally, this is not the association that the OGC was trying to get.

And it cost them £14,000 too! Be careful with your company logos, because you could end up with a horrible PR blunder like the OGC.