Building your brand from the start make your journey as a blogger much more easier, and gives you a chance to learn a thing or two about yourself in the process. Here are some great ways the bloggers can brand themselves or their names from day one.
1. Ensure your brand doesn’t exist already
It can be quite exciting to come up with a unique blog idea and want to immediately jump right into it. But hold on. You need to set aside a week or a weekend to do some blog and brand research. Make sure that your domain name is available, and its corresponding social media handles.
Consider developing a branding board to solidify your brand’s colors, fonts, and overall design schemes before you jump in. Is there a trend here? Well, setting up your blog for success before it even launches is the first step towards building a strong, cohesive brand.
When you decide on this. Set up your blog on a platform that suits you and will fit with your requirements. A lot of people tend to use WordPress nowadays to blog, however there are a number of other options available too and it’s best to know what you can benefit the most from before starting. These tips about choosing your blogging platform shed some light on the matter.
2. Define your voice
The next step is developing the voice of your brand. Find out what kind of a voice you will have. For instance, when I was strategizing for That Working Girl, my idea was to create a blog that becomes the go-to resource for intelligent, savvy women in the marketing, PR, and advertising industries.
I didn’t want to post in a Valley Girl voice at all, and I didn’t want the verbiage of the blog to come across as too uptight. So, after several weeks of posting, I found my groove and I haven’t looked back ever since. As you strategize your blog’s voice, you need to think about who you’re writing to. What kind of a person they want to listen to?
Once you’ve nailed down the voice that resonates with your audience, and works for you, ensure that you are consistent in how you use it. This way, whenever someone is reading your posts, they will know it’s from you even without seeing the name of the author.
3. Speak to the tribe
In one of Kelly Cutrone’s books, “If You Have to Cry Go Outside”, is where I first learned about the term “tribe.” She refers to those in her inner circle as her “Wolfpack” referring to ladies who are generally all out, no holds barred go-getters, who are in the fashion PR industry and out for blood.
As for me, I see and refer to my audience as “Working Girls” which so far has caught on great. Keep in mind that your audience generally want to belong to a community or a group. So, create one for them. Consider CloudPeeps who call their great tribe as Peeps. You can also identify ways to interact and engage your tribe in a similar way.
4. Network wisely
Engaging other bloggers is one of the best ways to build credibility in your niche, since it opens you up to guest posting opportunities. These will allow you to get high quality backlinks to your website. Such links will also serve as powerful signals for credibility to the search engines, and will help them establish your authority in that niche. It’s therefore essential to conduct some networking around your niche.
Furthermore, commenting and guest posting on other blogs with the same target readers/audience as you, will enable your brand to reach more people and hopefully obtain more readers to your blog. Nonetheless, it is important to ensure that the bloggers you associate and interact with are aligned to your ideas, values, and objectives to maintain the integrity of your personal brand.
5. Use the right images
The images you use can dramatically increase the appeal of your blog posts. Besides this, people are more likely to respond positively to content that has compelling visual aspects, meaning that if they are lots of graphics inserted between the blocks of text, they will be more inclined to read your posts to the end.
Use images that complement the visual aesthetics of your blog, and be sure to select the ones that best explains or illustrates the point you are trying to outline your blog posts. Selecting the right images allows you to craft great blog posts that can appeal to all types of readers, and at the same time capture and hold their attention for much longer than if you had not used any images at all.
6. Establish yourself as an expert
An important part of building a strong personal brand is to work tirelessly in order to establish yourself as an expert in your niche through your content. A great example of this is Lauren Hooker of the Elle & Company. She offers expert advice on blogging and branding through her business’ blog, and has over 45,000 readers a month flocking to her helpful content.
Great bloggers differentiate themselves from the good bloggers by adding a great amount of value to each and every post they publish. So, the next time you’re creating a post think about what your readers will take away from the post, and how it will help them.
7. Collaborating with other bloggers
Another way to strengthen your brand is to collaborate with other bloggers in your field. They don’t necessarily have to belong in the exact niche as you, but you can at least ensure that the values and those of their readers are similar or aligned with yours.
In general, if you just make uninspiring attempts to obtain exposure, you might struggle reaching the type of readers you want for your blog, and it might end up being a waste of time, resources, and effort.
8. Monitor your online reputation
As we’ve mentioned previously, monitoring your online reputation is very important when it comes to protecting your personal brand. It’s extremely necessary largely because when you start a new blog, you become a public figure. Chances are there are some people might want to talk negatively about your site to put you down, or even spread rumors with the motive of tainting your reputation.
You need to stay on top of these things, otherwise your online reputation could take a serious hit. Monitoring your online reputation regularly will allow you to get to the root of the problem before it’s too late. Performer a google search of your personal brand and see if there are any comments on articles published about you. If you don’t have the time, and you just do blogging as a side thing, you can find an online reputation monitoring service that can do all this for you.
9. Stay Authentic
When building your brand, the most important thing to remember is to stay true to yourself as a blogger and to have fun. Your readers can see right through you whenever your content has no or little authenticity. If you’re feeling a little drained from building your brand as a blogger, take a week or weekend off. You’ll be surprised how refreshed you’ll feel and how ideas will flow after the break.
