Every blog needs a tagline – a little snippet of words that tells you what this pet blog is all about.
Have you noticed our new look (check out our home page as well!)? A couple of weeks ago we revealed our new logo and tagline, and it all went live just last week. I wanted to share a bit about how I came up with it. Early in the year I had the itch to change our tagline. I had seen my old tagline “for the love of pets” on other websites, and started to feel that it was too generic. I’m not one who likes to go along with the crowd either, I like to be original.
I mentioned this when doing the Pet Blogger Challenge in January, and got encouragement from some of my blog friends and readers. That was all I needed.
I’ve never thought of myself as being very creative, until I started the blog. Writing a blog can become so much more than just telling a story, or researching for an informative post. It really does take creativity to put fun stories and photos together.
I wanted to put that creativity to work and come up with a tagline that suited us. When I first started out in 2012, I didn’t really have a clear purpose, other than writing about pets. I was all over the place on subjects, and it was never my original intention to write mostly about my own furry family. But as we grew and developed, it did become mostly about our family, and issues that affect us directly.
As our family grew and changed as well, and life threw some curve balls at us, that led us more to health and training issues. While we’ve had some stressful times, learning and studying about cancer, senior pets, reactive dogs, and other health and behavior issues has helped me to grow. They say you should never stop learning, especially as you get older, and I believe that.
One of our newer readers/bloggers, Molly of Callie’s Wag suggested “I love the title of your site. Maybe you could play off that?” That started my wheels turning in the direction of playing off of “wag and woof”.
What did I want our tagline to say? I wanted it to still reflect my love of animals, and how we are working toward the goals of being healthier and happier, through training, keeping active, and natural living. The goal is to accomplish that using as few words as possible.
I had a whole list of ideas, most with too many words, so I focused on just a few things and figured out how to tie them together:
“Barking About….” Here I’m tying in the “woof” in our title. I had written a couple of posts where I used the words “barking about” instead of “talking about”: “Barking About…. Canine Paws and Toes” was one.
“Love” – I did want my love of pets, and our mutual love, to still be reflected in our new tagline, so I pulled that word from our original.
“Health” – I had “health and wellness” in some of my originals, but I really wanted to scale that back. I feel like “health” can cover a variety of topics including being active, eating well, and training.
“And Our Purr-suit of Happiness”. Even though we may focus more on dogs here, we will always have cats and I wanted to be sure that people would know that too. I also wanted to keep our original patriotic theme we’ve had from the beginning. I wrote about how that came about in my post the last time we made changes: “Monday Mischief – Changes”, if you are curious why I’ve always had that.
Pulling from a quote from our American Declaration of Independence “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” was the perfect way to share my goal of keeping my pets and our family happy. We also want to often bring smiles to our readers’ faces, through funny stories of our everyday lives.
Regular readers also know that we’ve started a small farm “Barking Dog Organic Farm”, and I love how that name now ties in with the blog as well, since I’ll be sharing farm stories more in the future.
Once I had the new tagline, I needed a new logo. I hesitated at first to use Luke and Cricket as models for the logo, since I know they may not be here on the blog forever, if I keep going for a long time. But I also knew they could perfectly illustrate “wag and woof”, so I decided to take that plunge. I feel like we’ll probably always have a beagle in our lives, and most likely Labs as well. Putting the patriotic bandanas on them was a great way to tie in our original colors and theme. I’m thrilled with how it came out. Thank you again to Melanie of “Lace and Lark” for the design.
Melanie will also be designing a logo for the farm, using those same characters as a basis. My hope is to add in a barn, chickens, and a black cat to that logo as well. Samantha will be represented! Watch for a page to be added for the farm sometime in the future.
I feel satisfied with the changes we have made, think that it represents us well, and I’ve enjoyed the process. I hope you enjoyed reading about it, and agree that we’ve done the right thing!
It’s the PAWfect tag-line for you! I love it – and the logo is PAWsome.
I just love the changes and how they came about! Hoorah for you. I need a logo too.
You know my thoughts, Jan, but to put here on your “official” new tagline-I love it, and love all the ideas you have mentioned that went into creating it! And you know how creative I think you are!
Thank you, Lynn, and thank you for your encouragement when I ran my ideas by you!
You absolutely did the right thing!! I love the new logo, the new tagline, and how you’ve brought it all together! And as Brian said, “you would have a hard time convincing [me] that you’re not creative!”
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my (nearly) 64 years, it’s that we must all continue learning as we get older. It keeps the brain active and supple. It also helps to keep the boredom away, which is truly essential. So I’m looking forward to the page for the farm, as I know I will learn a lot from your experience.
Thank you so much, Sue!
Honestly, I’ve seen too many people retire and then having nothing, and you can just see how lost they seem! You are doing great with taking your class.
I hope I can keep the blog and farm going well into my retirement, but if not, I’ll come up with something else like you did to keep my brain occupied. 🙂
I love your logo and tagline! I should probably think about updating mine too. You should be really proud of yours ♥
Thank you, Melissa! With the creative team you have over there, you should have no trouble coming up with something should you decide to do it. 🙂
It’s a wonderful logo, very fresh looking and making us wonder what you’ll bark about next 😉
I sometimes wonder if I’ll run out of things to bark about, but so far so good! I guess all those changes life can bring help with that as well. 🙂
I think it is great.
You would have a hard time convincing us you’re not creative, we love the tag line and your logo really rocks!
That is so sweet, thank you so much, Brian!
It’s great you are so enthused about your new venture!
Congrats on the new tagline! It’s purrrrrrfect!
It’s all “purrfect” to me!
Thank you, Caren! xo
I love it! As cat person, I especially like the “purr-suit of happiness” part 🙂
I was a cat person long before I was a dog person, so there was no way I could leave the kitty part out!
I like what you have done, and it does go perfect with what you talk about here. Life is a journey that changes, and since our blogs reflect our lives, they change and evolve too.
Thank you, Mary! I know that you know all about those changes, and I think the direction you ended up taking your blog has been just perfect.
It’s a great evolution on your original idea. Always felt like you need to evolve or become extinct and I think you have nailed it! Great job on refining, targeting and encompassing with your overall plan with the farm. All the best.
Thank you so much, Monika. I love how it has all ended up tying together, and it helps to motivate me as well. 🙂
I like it, I really like it. If it’s one thing I’ve learned through blogging, is things are always changing. As we grow and learn (I also agree we never stop learning!) our interests change and I think it’s good to reflect those changes. Can you imagine if we never changed one thing?
BORING! 🙂
You are so right about that, Jodi, thank you so much!!
Yes! When you first posted about a new tagline, I was all for it. I LOVE IT! It’s pawsome!
Thank you so much, Molly, and thank you for helping to get me on the right track!