Branding for Bloggers

Tips to Grow Your Online Audience and Maximize Your Income

Zach Heller

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781621532484
• eBook ISBN: 9781621532743
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Advertising
• Index: Business

There are more than 54, 000 new blogs started every day around the world. The stark reality is that most will fail because bloggers don't have enough information on marketing themselves. The key to any successful marketing plan is a strong brand. Branding for Bloggers features tried-and-true, it-worked-for-me methods of branding from a rich mix of professional bloggers and branding experts. Bloggers will learn how to define their brand, establish it to grow the reach of their blog, and use their new brand identities to start earning money online.

DEFINING YOUR BRAND

The first step

in creating a strong brand is deciding
what you want that brand to be.

In all likelihood, even if you haven’t given this much thought, you already have the makings of a brand. It’s up to you whether or not you want to build on what you already have or start anew, with a fresh branding strategy.

Defining your brand is a process that takes time for the blogger who’s just now considering their brand. It requires you to spend some time thinking about your goals as a blogger, and how you want your readers to see you, read your posts, and interact with your blog.

How do you want your readers to see you?

Do you want them to see you as an expert in your field? Do you want them to contact you for advice? Do you want them to laugh?

In the sections that follow, you’ll learn how all of the different aspects of your blog go into defining your brand to the world. And yes, we want you to think that big. The world is your audience.

You’ll learn about naming your blog or company, choosing a domain name and a design that fits, defining your writing style and sticking to it, using different post lengths and frequency, and developing the supporting pages around your blog to give visitors the best possible experience when they come to your blog.

This first chapter is the most important. Once we’ve defined your brand, we’ll lead you on the path of growing that brand and using it to drive the kind of traffic and income you dream about.

WHY ARE THEY READING?

To start with, ask yourself one simple question: “Why are people reading my blog?” The answer to that question will begin to lead you toward an idea of what your brand will be. It will help you to define your goals. It will tell you who you’re writing for. And it will give you a pretty clear picture of what you’re writing about.

How do you know the answer? That can be a bit harder to figure out, especially if you’re just starting out or if you’ve yet to amass a great deal of readers. But take a look at your posts. Take a look at other blogs on similar topics. What makes you different?

Maybe people are reading your blog because they’re interested in the same area as you. But that’s not all. What else about your blog keeps them interested? Is it the way you write? Is it the amount of knowledge you have on a particular topic? Is it humor?

Whatever it is, it’s important that you capture it and use it to help you define your brand and your blog moving forward.

Take a look at what good branding can do: Michela Chiucini (www.webislove.com) has one of those blogs you just want to stay on for hours at a time. No wonder, as one area she specializes in is blog design. Chiucini is a world-renowned web designer based out of Tuscany who has an extensive portfolio that includes Bigodino, Esn Card, and Napa, among others. “A blogger must first find her/his niche and define the audience,” she says. With this in mind, she or he can start to define the brand: the tone of voice, the level of engagement expected, the design, the style, the logo, the content, and everything else that will make up the brand. Every aspect will contribute to define the brand of the blogger.

And yes, it’s that large of a scale that we’re dealing with here. People who are new to branding will be surprised at just how much goes into a successful brand. But think again about the large companies that have worked long and hard to brand themselves.

Think about Apple. What goes into branding Apple? Everything you see and hear from them, from the commercials on television to the billboards on the Street, from the design of their retail stores to the design of their products, from the CEO giving a presentation on stage at a product launch to the genius selling you your new iPhone—they’re all part of their brand. If any of those things did not follow or contribute to the brand, it would stand out. It would change the user experience for anyone who purchases or uses Apple products. And Apple, driven by perhaps one of the greatest branding experts of all time, the late Steve Jobs, just could not afford that.

So that’s what branding is all about: creating an online personality for your blog that’s identifiable to your readers.

Joe Pulizzi, co-author of Managing Content Marketing, believes it’s helpful to visualize your ideal reader when brand strategizing. “Try putting the reader first. Then build an audience persona—a real-world idea of what your ideal reader might look like, and write to that.”

Think of branding the way you think of a person’s style. When we talk about “branding,” we’re really talking about making everything in your blog match. Not that you have to have only one font or color, but that the mood and personality of every part of your blog is identifiable as your brand. Branding is important for bloggers to learn about and understand because, face it, with so many blogs out there, and new ones popping up each hour, you need to make yourself stand out from the pack. Every part of your blog, from the posts written to the logo you create, will come to define your brand.

When most bloggers are just starting out, the idea of branding is simply not on their minds.

Depending on the field that you’re in and the education you’ve pursued, you probably don’t know much about what branding is, let alone why it might be an important part of running a successful blog.

The first focus is always on just getting started. And really, that’s not a bad place to start.

According to Zac Johnson, successful blogger and author of Blogging Tips: Confessions of a Six Figure Blogger, “The best way to get started in the world of blogging is to actually get started. Don’t worry about spending a ton of money on guides or consulting with gurus. You can easily get set up with your own domain name and hosting for only a few dollars a month. It’s much more effective to learn everything as you walk through the process than trying to read everything you can about blogging and never actually getting started.” As with anything, the adage “just do it” applies. It’s important to really put yourself out there and establish your identity as a blogger before making any serious branding decisions. “You need to actually get started and learn through your actions, successes, and failures,” said Johnson. So first, prior to branding your blog, you must start blogging.

Thousands of blogs are started every day for a variety of different reasons. They can begin simply as an outlet to express oneself, a vehicle to further promote a business venture, or as a source of emotional release, allowing one to cope with the difficulties of daily life.

I’ve seen blogs about bringing a child into the world, blogs about building a new home, blogs about helping out in developing countries, and blogs about blogging. Basically, whatever topic you consider blogging about, chances are there’s already a blog on that topic. A quick Google search will prove me right.

So why should I start blogging if there’s already one (or many) blogs in my niche?

How can I ever expect to be successful?

That’s where branding comes in. As I said before, and as I’ll continue to bring up later in this book, your brand will help you stand out from the blogs in your niche and become a go-to source for many readers.

What are the worst branding mistakes you’ve seen?

As someone who works in the business opportunities market, the worst branding mistakes I’ve seen involve taglines which are simply unbelievable.

For example, “Make $1,893 a Day with NO Website” or “How To Make $1000 Daily The Lazy Way” are out-and-out lies.

Yes, people buy into the myths, but soon learn that they wasted their money on bogus schemes.”

—Ros Gardner

Net Profits Today netprofitstoday.com

Think about Starbucks. Were they the first place to offer fresh coffee on the go?

No. But they defined themselves in a way that was very different from the other companies that were already operating in that space. The goal was to take the appeal of a local coffee shop and turn it into a chain that could expand across the country.

So how did they do this? First, they set about creating a café look and feel, something that people who enjoyed coffee houses could identify with. The coffee had to be good. The atmosphere had to be hip. And the menu had to be distinct. Starbucks is a story of branding success. They took this vision and developed a now worldwide chain of coffee houses that look and feel like local places no matter where you are. They have become prime places for coffee lovers and fans all over the world. When you go into a Starbucks you know what to expect, because you’re familiar with the brand, which took a lot of time and energy to build.

Let’s take a lo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Defining Your Brand
• Growing Your Brand
• Using Your Brand
• Resources and Further Reading