Branding Your Blog for Success

Why Brand Your Blog?

Do you get frustrated when visitors to your site don’t convert into subscribers? For many bloggers, not all, success equals an engaged and high volume readership, and/or making money from their blog. If you fall into either of those categories then you can benefit from improving the brand of your blog. This post will show you how.

Gaining a High Volume Readership

What makes a reader want to subscribe to a blog? Simply put, they understand what your blog is about, your brand, and they are attracted to it. If a reader doesn’t understand what you are serving at your blog, then they won’t know if they will like your future content. By having a clear brand, readers will know what to expect from you in the future. If they like that then they will subscribe. A stronger, more clear brand will yield more subscribers.

Bookmarking vs. RSS

What makes a person bookmark vs subscribe? A bookmark says “I like what’s on this site and I want to be able to return to it later.” Subscribing says “I don’t want to miss a single future post of this blog!” Subscribing only happens if the blog is very interesting or very valuable to the reader. Bookmarking is great, but subscribers are better because you will have a more involved community which will drive more traffic. When your site is a happening place, people will link to you, return to see what’s going on and to socialize. This is what you want.

How You Can Use Branding to Increase Your Blog Traffic and Make More Money

Branding your blog will make clear to your readers what your blog is about. You want them to be able to put into words what your blog is all about. Otherwise how could they ever want to share your site with others or subscribe if they can’t describe what your blog is about.

How to Brand Your Blog

You will need to sit down with a pen and paper and brainstorm the following questions. For each question write down your answers and then write down ideas about how you can communicate this or put it into action on your blog. Think in terms of your layout, colors, logo, content, ads you use, images, and all other elements of your blog.

BLOG BRANDING QUESTIONS:

Who are You?
Readers like to know about the author. It makes your writing more interesting because it adds context. How much you reveal is up to you. Some blog authors choose to reveal themselves only between the lines of their posts. Others spill their souls completely and let us know everything on their “About” page. How much you reveal is a part of who you are.

What is Your Blog About?
What is the theme of your blog? What is your message? Do you have a mission statement or a manifesto? What can people expect to see there? What are your major categories? Is your focus broad or narrow? What medium do you use: words, music, video, images, all of the above? What is the culture, style, and feeling you want on your blog? Does your blog clearly communicate this or is your site confusing to your readers? See if you can tighten up your message to be more explicit.

Why Does Your Blog Exist?
Why did you bring your blog into existence? What was the impetus? What drives you to bring such information to others? What is your passion and why? Is your source of motivation a constant or has it evolved over time? Do you expect it to remain static or change, and if so how?

How Does Your Blog Work?
How often do you publish posts? Does your blog have a schedule for it’s categories like ZenHabits? Do you run regular “specials” such as contests, memes, a series on a particular subject? What is your comment policy? Is it anything goes or do you want to encourage a certain atmosphere of civility?

Who Is Your Audience?
Who do you want reading your blog? How do find those people and bring them to your site? What do they like? How age are they? Male, female, both? What kind of work do they do? What are their hobbies? Do they have children, pets? What are they passionate about? Where do they hang out physically and online? Who are you linking to?

What Makes Your Blog Unique?
Surely there are other blogs that cover information similar to yours, yes? What makes your presentation special? What makes your blog remarkable versus mundane? Maybe your subject matter isn’t intrinsically flashy. How is it that a mundane topic like recipes can be a major hit for one blog, and a complete bomb for another? It’s your combination of all these elements listed above, but how will you communicate it? What is your elevator speech about your blog? This is your 30 second description of your blog. Will it win someone over with such force as to compel that person to subscribe? It needs to!

Why Should I Subscribe to Your Blog?
Otherwise known as “What’s In It For Me?” What real value will your reader gain by subscribing to your blog? Subscribing does have a cost even though it is free. The cost is time, and as we all know, this is our most valuable resource. Why should I spend some of that valuable currency reading your site? Tell me how I will benefit and I just might sign up!

Conclusion
There is a lot of creative heavy lifting to do in terms of branding your blog. Each of these answers needs to be translated into the physical elements of your blog. But isn’t that part of the fun?! I think so. Good luck and happy branding.

K. Stone is author of Life Learning Today, a blog about daily life improvements. A few of her most popular articles are 7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Financial Life, Make Money with Your Blog: The Ultimate Resource List, 5 Keys to Happiness, and How to Keep Your Child from Ever Smoking.