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Small Business Link asked executives from two firms we profiled on July 2 -- Mark Hellendrung, president of Narragansett Brewing Co., and George Wright, director of marketing at K-TEC Inc.'s Blendtec -- to moderate a forum on branding on WSJ.com. Narragansett is reviving a New England beer by forging relationships with regional bars and beer lovers. Blendtec promotes its blenders by posting online videos of them blending golf clubs, iPods and other unlikely ingredients.

We asked Messrs. Hellendrung and Wright to share tips for building a brand at a small company. And we invited readers to comment on the strategies and talk about what works and doesn't work for them. Here are edited excerpts from the discussion.

MR. WRIGHT: To build a brand, you need to leverage all messaging so that it is concise, consistent and clearly understood by your own employees.Your content needs to be worth watching. If it is, people will not only view it, they will pass it along to friends, work associates or family members. It's critical that you don't stretch the truth. If you exaggerate or try to mislead people, you're running the risk of being exposed in a public and viral way, resulting in overall damage to your brand.

MR. HELLENDRUNG: I've learned over time that you've got to start with a unique reason for being, something that makes you clearly different from every other product or service out there...Another key is staying true to that brand message, which is incredibly hard because the temptation always comes to be all things to all people. Lastly, I've learned that you've got to let your brand permeate all aspects of the business.

MR. WRIGHT: Today's technology has made a significant impact on how people get their information. Blogs, TiVo, Web sites, etc., are changing the landscape of information distribution. You have to keep up.

MR. HELLENDRUNG: I agree that there's much to building a brand. I look at what Apple's doing with the iPhone. They've got advertising, public relations, word-of-mouth, etc., all clicking for them. Unfortunately, that's not our reality. At Narragansett, it's almost impossible for us to get a meaningful share of mind through traditional marketing because our competitors have such huge budgets, we run the risk of being lost in the clutter.

MARTY ROBBINS OF IRVING, TEXAS: George, How do you keep something like this going, or do you? Is there a sunset plan and a marketing strategy that goes along with it?MR. WRIGHT: This campaign continues to have legs -- and we have some fun things coming down the road. There is a sunset plan, although I am not prepared to talk about it yet.

AMISH PARASHAR OF SAN DIEGO: Brand building takes both short- and long-term efforts. Blendtec's campaign seems like a phenomenal first step. The second step is improving sales conversion. Of those who visit your site, how many buy? As the Blendtec brand gained some traction, one would hope more people were buying its blenders.

MR. WRIGHT: To date, this campaign has produced record sales for every month since the campaign launch. I expect that this trend will continue.