How To Brand Your Blog

The best way for your blog to be successful is if its content stands out. However, this is not enough for long-term success. A blog post being picked up once or twice by Pinterest or Google will not lead to consistent traffic. You need something more, you need your content to be memorable. For it to be, it also needs to bear your signature. What that means is that when people see your content, they must recognize it straight away for what it is: your content. That’s why you need to brand your blog.

Successful long-lasting brands have one thing in common: strong branding. Whether people see the logo or their content, they will know directly who the brand is. Which will have a huge impact on whether they buy the product or click on the link. When it comes to blogging, it is exactly the same. Strong brands are perceived as legitimate and trusted sources of information. You want your blog to be seen as such too, and that is why you need to brand your blog.

How to build your personal brand with blogging

A brand is defined as ” a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”. That is what you want to achieve with your blog. Make is so that people will see your content and recognize it as yours even without seeing your name or blog URL.

1. Remember the element of a strong brand

Before you brand your blog, it is important to remember that you need certain element to ensure your brand is solid. Some of those elements will be final while other can be changed over the course of the life of your brand. However, to strengthen your blog’s brand, it is better if they do not change too much.

• A memorable name: It is your blog name as well as the username you will use across all social media channels. Since there are a lot more users now than in the past, it may be difficult to get the username you want. Thus, you may want to check what is available. Your blog name just be your name or and indication of what you blog about. Make sure it is not too clever and easy to remember.
• Your URL: It usually comes from your blog name. Similarly, it must not be too difficult to remember.
• A tagline: To indicate what your blog is about, what type of information visitors can find. It must not be too long.
• A color palette: to use across all your platform consistently to ensure strong visual brand recognition.
• Other branded visuals: a logo, fonts, images and photos.
• A brand voice: to inject personality into your brand, make it more human and more interesting.
• A topic or niche: to have a content focus and establish yourself as a trusted source in that niche.

It is important that try to brand your blog. Indeed, it lets people know who you are and what you do. By having a clear brand, readers will know what to expect. If they like what you do, they’ll stick around. 

2. Pick a niche

Your niche or main topic is key to build a strong blog brand. It will allow people to know what you do and what to expect from your content. Furthermore, by focusing on one niche, you will consistently and frequently write content about it, which will eventually position you as a legit source of information and an expert in your field.

On the other hand, deciding to write on anything that cross your mind and spread your content topics so thing will make it more difficult show yourself as a trusted source of information about one topic. A niche helps to give direction.

However, you are under no obligation to pick one, nor does it have to be restrictive. A lot of blogger pick the lifestyle niche for the variety of topics and the flexibility it offers. Even as a lifestyle blogger, you can focus on just a few topics, like fashion and baking for example.

Regardless of your niche, writing on what you are passionate about is the best way to inject your personality in the copy, make it unique and stand out. Your niche will also help you narrow the topics you want to write about. Then, you will choose keywords clusters relating to those topics, which will help boost search engine optimization, increase traffic to your blog and eventually position you as an expert in your field.

3. Create your brand voice

Once you know your niche or what topics you want to focus on with your blog, you need to think of ways to inject your personalities to your content to give its own voice. That is how you will make your content unique and stand out. It will also help your brand seem more human and position yourself as an easily identified and authoritative source for your area of expertise.

While your brand voice will mostly be noticeable through your writing, it will also be injected in social captions, graphics and other visuals associated with your blog. To make it easier, you can think of three qualities that define you and that you want your blog to be like. You can then use those three traits when communicating with your audience. Knowing how you want to be perceived help to create content that will match this perception.

A strong brand voice will ensure that your content will not be confused with your competitors’. Since your blog brand voice is an extension of your personality, it should be unique. If people read your work and think you are someone else, then it may need some extra work.

4. Settle on visuals

Building a brand for your blog goes through your brand voice as well as the visuals you choose. Some logos are very memorable and the number one way to remember a brand. People tend to remember information better when they are highly visuals. Furthermore, strong branded visuals can help people recognize your content on any platforms and encourage them to click.

Strong visuals include:

• A logo: Your blog does not have to have a logo but it can really help. You may design something quite intricate or settle for your blog name written with a specific font. It is essential that no ones has the same logo as you. You can also use a photos as profile picture for your social media.
• A color palette: Your color palette will enhance your brand’s personality and make it more recognizable. Colors evoke feelings. Thus, the colors you choose will affect your audience’s personality of you, thus they must be picked very carefully. Choose three main colors plus two secondary ones. Remember the HEX codes to ensure you use the same colors consistently.
• Your photos: The photos you will use must match the content of the specific blog post they will illustrate. Of course, you will not use outfit photos for a recipe. Your photo must speak to your audience, be of high quality and use consistently on your social platforms.

Settling on your visuals and using them consistently will help strengthen your brand blog and ensure users recognize your content. If you pick pastel colors for your blog, use them too on your Pinterest pins and social media headers.

5. Design your blog around your brand

Now that you have chosen your brand name, you need to think of your blog design. You have a niche, or topic, you know what color you want to use, when feelings you want your readers to have when reading your blog posts. You want your brand to be perceived in a certain way. Now, it is time to build the biggest representative of your brand: your blog.

Your blog is your shop window. It is the final destination. You want people there, you want them to enjoy your content, to stay some time and to come back. Then again, great visuals will help make a great first impression. Your blog theme should be beautiful, responsive, easy to navigate, visually pleasing.

To ensure bounce rate is not too high and that people do not leave straight after landing on your blog, it must load very fast. There are a few plugins that can help speed up a wordpress blog. Indeed, websites that load in more than three seconds, have higher bounce rates.

On your blog you will use your color palette, images and photos that suit your niche and theme. Always ensure your photos are top quality and your blog post striking so that people want to click.

6. Be consistent across channels

Having a fast loading beautiful blog is great to get people to stay there a few seconds. Amazing informative content will get them to stay longer and to come back. A strong SEO strategy is what will get people on your blog in the first place. The more your work on your copy and keywords, the higher your chances to get noticed by search engines and the higher your organic traffic.

One other way to get people to your blog is via social media. There are plenty of social media platforms that you can use. One way to brand your blog is to pick a few and make the most of them. While Instagram will help to visually strengthen your brand, Pinterest can be an amazing source of traffic.

However, people may find you through any social media platform. The way your tweets are articulated and your pins designed will give a tiny first impressions of what people may expect upon landing on your blog. That is why, all your visuals across all social media platforms must be consistent, using your color palette, with the same tone of voice and similar styling.

Consistency across social media channels will also make it easier to find you (i.e. same username).

Hope this post will be helpful. Any other advice to add here?

Thanks a lot for stopping by. Hope you liked this post.

See you soon,
Love,
Corinne.