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How To Brand Your Blog – The 12 Do’s And 5 Don’ts

Think about the effects popular brands have on people. Take Apple for example. No matter what product they launch, there are thousands of people who will buy their products, because of the brand they have created.

Brands can become addictive to people. Depending on their products, it can either be good or bad for the society. However, you can’t deny the fact that brands make a lot of  money just because of their name.

If you now understand the importance of building a brand, it is now time to brand your blog. You need to build a brand around your blog so that people wait for you to release new products, or recommend affiliate products.

Building a brand, however, is not easy. It takes time, patience and the skill to look and act professional. That being said, there are a few things you can do, to build a brand around your blog easily.

Let me list some of these easy methods.

12 easy ways to brand your blog

1. Use unique color combinations

Creating a color palette for your blog is one of the most important, if not the most important step in creating a brand identity for your blog.

You have to choose the colors for your blog wisely and use these colors consistently throughout your blog and also for your social media images and covers if possible. This creates a brand image in the eyes of your followers. If you have been blogging for some time now, you will know that creating a brand image is the most difficult yet the most beneficial step in blogging.

You can choose a color combination based on the following factors. Normally your color palette can have 4 to 6 colors.

i) The colors you love

More than anyone else, you are going to spend the highest amount of time in your  blog. So, choose colors that you love. If you don’t like the look of your blog, it can’t inspire you to give your best.

ii) The colors in your niche

Look at the colors other bloggers in your niche use. Most likely, the audience in your niche are used to seeing these colors, and it will be easy for you to get them to read your blog. On the other hand, if you use completely different colors, it could be very difficult to gain loyal followers.

iii) Color Psychology

Our brains process different colors differently. While one color may give a particular feeling, another color can give a completely different feeling. Which color you want to choose also depends on how you want to portray yourself to the prospective customer.

Do you want to portray yourself as Bold and powerful, or warm and friendly, or leader who wants to help? Depending on your intent, you can choose a completely different color.

If you need help, the infographic below can help you.

References – Color psychology of Black, 10 famous logos designed in Pink, Color pyschology of white, Psychology of branding with the color red, Famous brands keeping cool with Blue logos, Green branding, Psychology of branding with the color Yellow, Purple power brands, Psychology of the color brown, Psychology of Orange branding.

2. Be consistent on social media platforms

This one is important. To build a brand, you have to be constantly on the lookout for interested audience.

According to Hootsuite, around 45% of the world’s population (3.484 Billion people) use social media in 2019.

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So, 45% of your audience, if not more (depending on the country your audience live in) use social media regularly. So, you have to make sure that you are on the right social media searching for the right audience at the right time.

Being consistent on social media is a must. If your future blog visitors regularly use social media, you have to try to provide them fresh content (informational, entertaining or amusing) regularly (hourly, daily or weekly).

But before jumping right into a social medium, first do some research to find out which social media will be suitable for you.

3. Use testimonials

As your blog grows, and it becomes clear to you what sort of a role you are going to take – an affiliate marketer, a course creator, a membership creator or a reporter (reporting about other famous people and famous things in your niche), ask for reviews from people who have benefited because of you, so that you can display these reviews to your visitors.

This makes it easier to get new clients/customers.

4. Prove your credentials

Are you a proficient writer? Then write for famous websites like Inc, The Economist and The Newyork Times. Now, display that proudly across your blog.

Are you an excellent course creator? Sell these courses in websites like Udemy and Teachable. Now, display the results from your sales on your website.

Are you an excellent freelancer? Enlist in freelance websites, make sales and then proudly display the results in your blog.

Look at this website to see how Timothy Sykes does it. Once you land on his home page, you can see how qualified he is, what his skills are, because he displays his credentials right away.

Once you prove your credentials, people start trusting you more.

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Don’t worry if you don’t have any skills to prove yet. You can always gather them on the way. 🙂

5. Blog consistently

This one might be pretty obvious. If you are a blogger, you need to blog consistently. You can’t create a blog post once a month and claim to be the best blogger out there.

Many people claim that what matters is only the quality of the blog posts and not the quantity. That’s true. However, once your blog starts to gain a following, it is wise to publish blog posts, podcasts and videos regularly to give your returning visitors a reason to come back to your blog.

If you created your blog for the sole purpose of growing your email list, then may be, you don’t have to blog regularly. However, if you plan to create a brand around your blog, you should start blogging consistently.

I mean, look at all the big-time blogger like Neil Patel, Jeff Bullas and Seth Godin. They publish blog posts consistently, at least once a week.

6. Target pain points

When you write blog posts, don’t write blog posts randomly. Each blog post you write should have a purpose – to inform, educate or lead your visitors to perform an action.

This blog post from Thrive Themes explains how to create a marketing funnel using blog posts to make sales.

Make sure you target your visitors’ pain points, i.e., what are their biggest problems, what are their biggest fears and what do they urgently need solutions for?

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Then write blog posts to help them solve their problems or alleviate their fears.

Remember…

People don't want to be sold to, but they still want to buy. However, they want to make that decision themselves and be proud of it. - Maddy Click To Tweet

So, recommend the right product to them at the right time, that you feel will genuinely help them out. Help them make the decision to buy it. Then, they will buy it and thank you for it.

7. Have strong opinions

Regardless of what your opinion is, be strong about it. Most of the prominent bloggers I know have strong opinions. Most of the celebrities have strong opinions. Having strong opinions attract people to you.

So, don’t be afraid to write blog posts about controversial topics and voice your opinion.

8. Research before you start writing

Backlinko conducted this study by analyzing more than 1 million Google search results. According to the study, the average first position for a search term in Google was 1890 words.

So, writing long-form content not only pleases your readers but also search engines. All the more reason to write long articles.

However, writing long articles doesn’t mean writing irrelevant stuff. It means writing a lot of relevant content backed by solid facts and figures.

And that’s exactly why…

You need to do a lot of research before writing a blog post:

• What topics are others writing about?
• How can you make them better?
• What keywords are they targeting?
• Where do they get their facts from?
• Where can you get the statistics to back your opinions?

Instead of just voicing your opinion, if you back it up with facts and numbers, it makes the reader feel that you are intelligent and thereby trust you. This not only helps you justify your opinion, but also increases the reader value, trust and help your readers make rational decisions.

This blog post from Forbes goes into depth on why and how you should add more statistics into your blog posts.

9. Relevant Blog name

Do you want to brand your blog?

Then, come up with a relevant, yet easy-to-remember blog name.

Include your blog name in all your promotions – social media, blogger outreach and content re-purposing. This way you can make your future audience aware of you, even before they visit your blog. This, in turn helps develop the trust we talked about earlier.

10. Powerful blog tagline

Just like having a relevant blog name, having a powerful blog tagline is also important.

Well… How do I put it?

A tagline for a blog is like a cape for Superman. It doesn’t impact the functionality as such, but it gives you an identity.

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Having trouble coming up with a tagline? Visit this blog post by Copyblogger – How to create a solid rock tagline that truly works. Be sure to read the comments too. There are a lot of people who ask for suggestions regarding their tagline and the author helps them to improve their taglines.

11. Talk about other brands

If your blog is not famous yet, but you want to get famous fast, talk about other brands/bloggers in your blog. You could do one or more of the following:

• Curate other bloggers’ best blog posts weekly and write a blog post about it.
• Do an interview with a famous blogger and make a blog post out of it.
• Contact other bloggers, ask them their opinion and do a round-up post about it.

The good thing about talking about other bloggers in your blog post is that, there is a good chance that those bloggers will share your blog post with their audience. This way, you get access to new audience that you didn’t have access to earlier.

12. Link to relevant content

Don’t be afraid to link to relevant content around the internet thinking that the blog visitors will leave your blog. When you link to relevant content, you tell your readers that you are not afraid of them leaving your website. Instead you come across as a genuine person wanting to help others out. And that’s who you should be.

Besides, when you inform other bloggers that you have linked to them, some of them might share your content and some of them might even link back to you.

Besides when you research before writing your blog post, linking back to those blog posts that helped you will also increase your credibility.

These are some of the steps you can take to build a brand around your blog.

Even though it is important to follow these 12 steps to build your blog’s brand, it is also equally important to not to do certain mistakes, in order to not lose your credibility and authority in front of your audience.

Doing any of these 5 mistakes can severely degrade the brand identity of your blog. I have arranged them in ascending order of the effect they can have on your brand image.

5 Mistakes not to do, if you want to brand your blog

5. Not writing consistently

Consider the following scenario:

A prospective customer/client visits your blog. He reads your blog post and is impressed by it. Now he searches for blog posts related to the blog post that he read.

But alas…

There aren’t any other blog posts related to what he read just now. So, he leaves your blog.

He returns to your blog after a week to see if there is a new blog post that can help him. But, there aren’t any.

So, he leaves and never returns to your blog post again.

To prevent this scenario from happening, and to give your readers a reason to return to your website, keep a writing schedule and write consistently.

According to a study made by Rakuten Marketing in 2014, an average visitor visits a website 9.5 times before making a purchase.

According to a study made be Episerver in 2017, 92 Percent of Consumers Visiting a Retailer’s Website for the First Time Aren’t There to Buy.

So, if you don’t give your readers a reason to return to your website, there is no way you can make any money from your blog by selling your own products, your affiliate products or your services.

4. Focusing on the money, not the audience

If you try to just make money from your blog visitors without offering any real value, you are bound to lose them soon.

Once, I joined a blogger’s email list because I loved his blog.

But guess what…

He kept sending me one sales letter after another trying to get me to purchase the products to which he is affiliated with. Needless to say, I unsubscribed from his email list soon. Don’t be that person. Try to help your visitors genuinely.

Remember, your blog is not about you. It is about your visitors and their future story. That story should be their struggle and how you helped them succeed. - Maddy Click To Tweet

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3. Venturing into new areas too early

As a new blogger, I know how irresistible it is, to venture into new niches.

But, you have to resist that urge and master your niche before you move on to another one. If not, you risk losing the trust of your readers.

2. Copying others content

Writing blog posts after researching other well-written blogs is one thing, but copying them without giving any due credit is something else.

Not only is it illegal, but also hurts your brand image in the long run, when you are found out.

1. Spelling and grammatical errors

Nothing can hurt your blog’s brand identity more than letting spelling and grammatical errors creep into your blog posts (Of course, they don’t creep in, you make them ;p ).

There was an expert at creating sales funnels whose newsletter I subscribed to. He used to send me a lot of informational content.

Once he sent me a sales letter (Email) to buy one of his products.

I loved the timing because, it was like he read my mind. It came at the right time as a solution to a problem I had.

But when I visited his sales page, I was so disappointed because his sales page was full of spelling errors.

I couldn’t believe that such an expert could be so careless. That one thing was enough for me to lose my trust in him.

And you know how the story would have ended.

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Spelling and grammatical errors must absolutely be avoided at all costs.

But, we are all human, and we are bound to make some mistakes down the road.

If English is not your mother tongue, you are bound to make a few mistakes. But, even if English is your mother tongue, when you write a 2000-word blog post, you can’t be 100% sure that you don’t have a single error in your creation. But, what you can be sure of, is that, these errors will tarnish your brand image.

Don’t worry. That’s why there are spelling- and grammar-check tools to correct them for you. However, there are a lot of these tools that it can be confusing to buy the right one.

If you are confused about which tool to buy, read my blog post where I compare the 6 best spelling-checking tools available online.