There are many, many facets of blogging, and it can be overwhelming to understand many of the “How Tos†if you aren’t already a techie pro when you begin. Creating your own brand is essential for helping people get to know you in this big wide blog world.
Here are a few easy tips to keep in mind when working to improve your blog’s brand.
Branding Strategies
Tip 1. Do your blog name, Twitter handle and email address all match?
There are so many social mediums today that it is key to keep your names and handles consistent. Readers who are new to your blog or new to following you on Twitter can get easily confused if there is no similarity in names.
Email addresses are free and easy to set up, so why not make an account dedicated solely to blogging? If you have been using your personal email address for some time and are concerned about switching to a new account for your blog, consider having emails sent to your personal account, forwarded to your new, branded email account.
Tip 2. Speaking of consistency, be sure to give some thought to the images used as profile photos as well as your Twitter.com page.
When you join a blogging community like SITS or BlogHer, what photo do you use? What about the thumbnail people see in places like Twitter or BlogFrog? Or the tiny image used when you subscribe to a blog via Google FriendConnect? Give some thought to what photo you use, and where (i.e. blog button image, or personal photo of yourself).
Your Twitter.com page is an extension of your blog, thus making it an extension of your brand. Be sure your Twitter description coincides with information on your About page, as well as coordinates with your blog’s look, feel and colors. There are some easy-to-use, free tools to help with this.
Tip 3. Set up your gravatar!
Have you ever seen images like this in the comment section of blogs you read?
That’s a Gravatar, meaning a “globally recognized avatar.â€
Gravatar images are linked to your email address, and you can upload the image of your choice after creating a free account.
Tip 4. Give careful consideration to your brand when working through a redesign.
A blog redesign might be a freshening up, or it might be complete overhaul. Whatever your plan, consider your brand and ways to strengthen it with your redesign. If the redesign is mostly a freshening up of your look, consider asking your designer to make some custom social media buttons. And if you are going for a complete overhaul of your site and branding, consider your blog’s name and content, your personality and the marketplace when making your design decisions. The mom juggling kids, work, blogging and marriage caricature is a very popular design, which means that while you might be consistent in your branding efforts, you will not be unique in the blogosphere.
Tip 5. Have you customized your URLs?
Did you know that once you have 25 Facebook “Likes” you can claim your vanity URL (i.e. Facebook.com/EliRoseSocialMedia)? Or that you can change the default LinkedIn profile URL to one that includes your name?
The more you look around, the more you see how many places and in how many different ways you interact within the realm of social media. Choosing usernames wisely and customizing profile listings as much as possible will help promote you and your brand.
Do you feel you do a good job of branding?
Great advice – thanks!
LOVE that wombat won.
She is hilarious.
Nice giveaway, ladies.
It was fun to tweet.
Good stuff…just finished getting my social media IDs all matchy-matchy. *relieved sigh*
Good stuff, Ladies!!! It is a challenge to keep everything matchy-matchy!
After reading this, I see I’ve failed on several levels to brand my blog. Oy. Good thing I won. 😉 Thank you! Can’t wait to talk about the analysis!
Thanks for the tips. Been hesitant to redesign my blog b/c I didn’t want to make the investment if I didn’t have readership. I didn’t know what came first: The design or the readers?
luckily for my dumbass self, i used my last name in my blog…and my twitter…with no idea about branding. so everything totally fell into place.
this happened on accident for me.
a super happy accident, thank goodness!
Great tips. Suddenly coveting a gravatar of my very own.
This is such great info – thanks so much! I have a question about keeping the brand (logo or gravatar) in posts to my email subscribers. I heard that the image causes emails to land in the spam boxes. What is your experience with this?
We feel that your decision to include a logo in your email feed should take into account your subscriber base. Email addresses like gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc. do not have a problem with images in email feeds. But if you have a lot of subscribers who would be using – say – a corporate email address, that’s where you may have difficulty.
Great! Since there is a slim chance a corporation would ever find me, I am sticking my logo back in!
Thanks so very much! 🙂
You ladies are doing a great job. Always enjoy freshening up my social media skills with your posts!
Great advice! I think I’m decently branded, but there is always room for growth. I want my theme to match my button, etc. Right now, it doesn’t. 🙁 But, I’m working on that!
Creating an email address specifically for my blog (and all related blog business) was one of the best things I did. It helps to keep my blog communications separate from everything else and makes it a lot easier to keep track of replies I need to send and contacts I’ve made.
I waited so long to get my avatar. It really makes my comments stand out. I use my button on the avatar. Should it be a picture?
I think that buttons are best for gravatar images. You’re doing good. 🙂
I think having a background in consumer marketing really helped when it came to branding my blog. I had lived the mantra of “be consistent” in my professional life for years, so I saw right away how this absolutely applied to my blog.
I actually did a similar post on this subject myself. You can check it out here if you like:
http://www.lifeofsaucyb.com/2010/09/five-tips-for-building-consistent.html
btw, catching up on your posts and learning a few things here this morning. 🙂
Great advice! I think I actually do all of that 🙂
Fantastic ideas and info.
Looks like I’ve got a lot of work to do!