Blogging becomes very famous and popular on the web, number of blog used to be increased everyday and there is thousands or million blogs on the blogopshere. If you have a blog and how can you stand out from the crowd? The answer is blog branding. In simple word, build a brand for your blog and stand out from the blogs which have similar niche.
Building a brand for your blog is not easy, it’s not a day, a week or even a month task, it could take you even a year to build your brand, to let people know your existence. I’ve been blogging for 2 years and I figure out that that there are actually some ways that we can build our brand, as how I brand my blog.
We know that producing quality content is one of the ways to build your brand, but do you know how many people out there does produce unique and quality content as what you do? The competition is extremely high, so you need to do something special and make your blog outstanding and stand out from the crowd.
5 Ways To Build Your Brand Effectively
1) Logo
Logo plays an important role in building your blog brand. You will need a logo that is unique and only used on your blog. Well known blogger like Problogger.net, Shoemoney.com, DailyBlogTips.com, and the like, when you see their logos and you’ll know who are them.
Also, when someone is writing about your blog and they like to include an image of your site, most probably they will use your logo, so your logo represents your blog. If you’re not good in designing your own logo, you can outsource it. Nowadays the price for logo design is cheap, you can get one at the range from $20 to $100 or even higher, of course the higher you spend the higher the quality you would get.
2) Theme
Blog theme is also very important for blog branding. Blog theme is the structure of a blog, when your visitors land your blog, first they will see your blog theme and roughly they can know what blog they’re reading.
You’ll always want your blog to have a relevant theme with your niche, if you’re writing about “make money online”, it looks weird if you use pasta on the background, it doesn’t make sense at all, right?
You may want to play around with the design as well, you have to know who is your audience and take this under your consideration. If you’re writing about daily news, make money online, business, banking and the like, try to design a blog theme which is more professional; if you’re writing about food, travel, toy, games and the like, then you may want to design a colourful blog theme.
3) Comment
Leaving comment can be affecting your brand as well, it can be improving killing your brand, it depends on how you manage it. If you’re the blog owner, you like to see your readers leave a comment and say “Great article and nice tips, thanks for writing it!”, or you like to see they give their own opinions and point of views? I’m sure you appreciate commentators who leave valuable comments on your blog.
Leaving spammy comment can kill your blog, so you might want to learn something blog commenting techniques, I’ve written about “10 Tips To Leave Comment and Drive Traffic” earlier, you can apply some of the tips to leave comment and build your brand too.
4) Avatar
Avatar is a small square image within the comment you left on others’ blog, most of the wordpress blogs have this feature. Avatar is an important item which people used to recognize who is the commentator. So you need to create your own avatar and get it displayed on every comment you left, 1st is to let people know that who are you, 2nd is to show people that you’re not spammer because most of the spammers don’t use avatar.
You’ll need an unique and outstanding avatar for your own use, you can either create an image that represent your blog (says blog name etc.) or use your photo (preferrable). It’s easy to create your avatar, head over to Gravatar.com, register by using the email that you leave comment and upload an image to Gravatar. Whenever you leave a comment by using the email that you registered with Gravatar, then your avatar will be displayed.
5) Content
Branding with content is that when you leave comment and the owner visits your blog in return, then they will read on your content, theme, logo and everything else. Grammatical error free is the basic requirement. Branding with content is not easy, you need to have good writing skill and technique to grab readers’ attentions.
You need to be knowledgeably in your niche so that you can handle readers’ comments. Show confident to your readers. Also, update your blog consistently with relevant content.
Conclusion
That’s not only the 5 ways above that help to build your brand, there are actually many ways that you can build your brand, these ways are what I’m doing to build my brand and find it really useful. You have to repeat them non-stop for few months or years to build your brand because people won’t be able to recognize you in short period, you have to show up in their blogs more often and let them know that you’re exist.
Besides of these ways, what method that you used to build your brand?
About Lee Ka Hoong
Agree all the 5 ways you mentioned in this post. I think it’s essential. Maybe we can’t complete all what it needs to brand our blog in one day..
However, we need to, at least.. continuously improve in the branding process.
.-= Siau Hen´s last blog ..What Does Ooi Zhao Qian Teaches Me? =-.
@Siau Hen,
Absolutely! We have to keep improving ourselves to make our brand better and well known one day, once you stop it and you’ll be kicked out of the blogopshere.
For me, branding is all about letting customers know who you are, what you do and how you do it…immediately they load your site. Your header, your logo, your picture, your words…all the things you say, Lee.
Andrew
.-= Andrew @ blogging guide´s last blog ..Free Premium Theme =-.
@Andrew,
Well said Andrew, that’s the purpose of branding, we want to let everyone knows about us. The more people knows about you, the more business you will get, that’s the principle. I can see that you’re doing these very well, keep on going.
Yeap, brand our blog that mean’s brand yourself too in this niche market as a professional and gurus. so you can get more chance and business market.
.-= Kevin Chong´s last blog ..Blog Writing =-.
Agree with you that’s why i create my simple logo. Yeah — my lack before is that i do not have any logo for my blog, and now. At least, i can focus to improve the content now. :D
.-= Dana @ LetUpdate´s last blog ..Having Killer Content for Blog Easily =-.
@Dana,
Honestly, your logo is really simple but better than nothing. Between, you can outsource it and get a nice looking logo with a cost as low as $50. That’s one of the most important elements that build your brand too. But of course, content takes the bigger portion. ;)
I do see some spammers use Avatar. :P
.-= Jayce´s last blog ..How to hack Facebook account profile =-.
@Jayce,
Spammer who uses Avatar is clever, but usually they don’t leave genuine comment, they will be known as spam as well.
Besides of the above mention, I think still left one is niche topic for reader and visitor who are interested in this topic. Another one is the RSS are very important to a blog.
.-= Kevin Chong´s last blog ..Web Development Company =-.
When it comes to niche, I fail in this are because until now my blog is a mixed bag of random post that don’t circulate around a central topic. Meaning, I still don’t have a niche. I guess, it’s a purely personal blog that is niche-less. :)
I think I have essentially met the above 5 requirements although I’m not very sure I met 100% the 5th point about the content being grammatical error free.
.-= James M.´s last blog ..AmplusnetPrivacyTools.exe Eating Up CPU Resources =-.
Oh I see. Now you can definitive a few small niche topic to write to drive more targeted traffic to your blog who are interested what you are write and suggestion. Lee mention the 5 requirement things we must follow, it is effective to brand your blog.
.-= Kevin Chong´s last blog ..Blog Writing =-.
Well I need that logo, I know it for quite some time, but somehow I can’t make myself deal with it.
I’ve just recently set things up with gravatar, I hope it will help people get to know me, because one day they will see my picture and say: “hey that is that guy from Croatia with that dumb Blogspot blog about ebooks, remember?” :D
.-= Davor Gasparevic @ Internet marketing ebooks´s last blog ..Major redesign! =-.
@Davor,
Haha, your gravatar saves your comment because your comment is in my spam folder for no reason. Normally I checked comments in spam box, first I’ll look at the gravatar then comment, if I didn’t see gravatar and I’ll just roughly scroll through and assume all were spam comment. lol! So you see gravatar helps a lot no matter in branding building or commenting. ;)
Agree with everything in the post. I also might combine commenting into a category of networking, which would include commenting on other blogs, replying to comments on your own blog, linking to other bloggers, and off-blog contact with readers, bloggers, etc.
.-= Will@laser hair removal´s last blog ..6 Laser Hair Removal Myths Busted =-.
@Will,
You’re right. I find interacting with blogger is the best way to build brand, in my point of view, health relationship plays the game. When you build the community, that would really help in your online business.
I am thinking of getting a logo for my blog. Not yet decided if I want to pay for it or do it myself.
I do the rest of the things mentioned in the list (though my theme is not unique).
Lee, in BTW, what happened to you logo deigning, if I remember you were going to have a new logo. When is it coming? Do you need help with it, I can help. May be even design one for you (may be free too). I can do simple Logo Designs.
.-= Agent Deepak´s last blog ..Blog with a Sex Appeal =-.
@Agent Deepak,
If you can design your own logo, that would be good; if not, just outsource it. With the cost of $50-$100, you can get a good looking logo.
I’ve requested the site to ask another designer to design my logo, the previous designer revised the logo for up to 5 times and no one satisfied me. So I’m waiting for the new revision, should be this 2 days. Regarding the free logo design for my blog, perhaps in future when I need a new logo? ;)
Building a brand is very tedious work indeed, just remember everything you put out there is there for everyone to see!
.-= Keith@Business3.0´s last blog ..Blogger Interview – Todd Fratzel =-.
Why wouldn’t pasta work with making money online? What if the blog is about the Italian restaurant industry? ;)
Great tips.
.-= Ari Herzog@Online Media Strategies´s last blog ..Why Do You Subscribe to Blog Comments? =-.
@Ari Herzog,
lol! Between, blog about food can be making money online too, many food bloggers in my country earn quite well with a single blog because they have huge traffic on their blogs. Of course, food blog need to be updated regularly to drive more traffic. :)