I’ve talked about all sorts of things in this Better Blogging series, but one thing I haven’t touched on is how you can craft a brand for your blog. It’s one thing to be just blogging and another to be blogging to make money or position yourself as an expert in your field. If you’re trying to do the latter, it’s past time you started crafting your blog’s brand.
Of course there are the common questions you can ask yourself when you’re ready to start really focusing on the branding for your blog. Those questions would be things like: What is my niche? What am I going to write about within that niche? Who is my target audience? But you obviously have to dig deeper than that. Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help do just that –
What’s your WHY?
The foundation of your blog’s brand is your purpose for blogging, aka your why. Not just the reason you created your blog, but the reason you keep blogging day after day. The first reaction to this question is often something surface level – “because I enjoy it” or “too keep up with my editorial calendar” may be something that comes to mind. However, I want to encourage you to look deeper than that. Are you blogging because you’re providing advice to those in a situation you were in when you couldn’t find any answers? Are you inspired by your own life to help others’ accomplish their dream of opening their own online shop? When you start looking deeper into what your why is, you’ll often find that it stems from something in your own story.
What problem am I solving for my readers?
For most of y’all, you’re an information focused blogger, like myself. What the heck does that mean? Well, it means we’re putting things like tips / advice, tutorials or how-to’s in our content to help solve problems for our readers. For example, I created this series because I wanted to help people up-level their blog by becoming better bloggers in ways they may have not considered. So, I’m solving their problem of having a not-so-professional or amateur blog by providing this free content! If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at who your audience is. Is it primarily bloggers? Business owners? Are they college students trying to cultivate a healthy life on a budget? Once you know who exactly you’re writing to, you’ll be able to reconsider how your content may be helping them.
What type of images will represent my brand?
Since trust in a brand is built through consistency, it’s important to even consider the types of images that you’ll rely on to represent your brand. Many people have come to know my brand through the clean, simple images with lots of white space that I share – particularly over on Instagram. Although not everything is perfectly white and crisp, there’s a theme in my images of being bright and often featuring at least one of my brand colors (turquoise, most often). Your images don’t have to be so bright, though. They can be moodier or be more story telling images. It’s okay to explore what works best for your brand, but once you have remember that the consistency is what will build trust and recognition not only with your loyal readers and followers, but also with the occasional reader as well!
Need more help crafting your blog’s brand? Click below to grab my set of worksheets to help you develop a true-to-you brand for your blog!