Building your blog’s brand does not need to be difficult. However, when it comes to branding you should always remember to exert effort to be consistent with the image you wish to portray or you’ll end up with confused, turned-off, and/or skeptical readers. Branding inconsistencies will make it obvious that the image you’re putting up is just a front and not really who the people behind the blog are. To make sure you build a solid image some of the things you should:
1. Sit down and decide the image you wish you wish to portray – More than just deciding you should put your thoughts to paper so that you can easily look back to determine if you are sticking to the brand’s purpose and goals.
2. Plot your course to attain a solid brand – Before you plot your course note that you need to know your destination. To know your destination refer to #1. Your brand’s goals and purpose will determine the appropriate ways to build your brand. Though I will outline somethings you can do to reinforce branding note that there are times when you can mix together methods and times when you can only use them one at a time. This is where plotting your course/timing will be needed. You don’t want to move to slowly and waste time in brand building but you also don’t want to come on too strong and put off new (even old) readers.
3. Start at once – As soon as you’ve made the important decisions and plotted your course start building your brand. If you keep on putting things off there’s a chance that your blog might develop it’s own reputation without any real conscious effort on your part to build that brand. This is good if you end up with the rep you want but could also end up giving you a rep that is somewhat different (in a bad way) from what you intend to build.
4. Stick to the brand – Again consistency is the key. Just because you don’t see results at once doesn’t mean that you should panic and rewrite your brand goals, strategy, etc. Changing tactics again and again is a sure way to NOT get regular/loyal readers.
Originally posted on June 13, 2008 @ 5:41 pm
