Whether you’re blogging for love or money, ultimately you want people to read what you write and you want your readership to grow. To help build your readership you need to be memorable. You have to build a brand.
And that brand is you. Yes, you.
There are a number of elements that go into building your blog brand. Here are a few:
- Your blog theme. If you can’t code or afford a custom theme for your blog, try to choose a theme that’s maybe a little less used than some of the ones that you see everywhere. You can’t stand out if you look like everybody else. Another thing you can do is change the color scheme of the theme you’re using and use your own custom picture in the header which is a good start. Then you can work on changing the whole look of the theme over time.
- Your topics. What are you writing about? This is a critical component of your blog brand. Content is king if you want readers to come and to come back. You can write about whatever is popular or you can write about what you know and are interested in. Go with the latter. Blog writing takes time and effort. If you’re jazzed about the things you’re writing about and you know something about the topic, that time and effort is reduced drastically. It’s easier. And your readers are going to pick up on your enthusiasm and enjoy reading the stuff you write.
- You. The first thing that people want to know when they read something they really like is ‘Who is this? Who wrote this? What’s this person all about?’ Put some time and effort into your ‘About’ page. And put up a picture. When people can attach a face and a personality to a brand, it helps cement the bond and makes a more human connection. You need to greet the people that come to your blog, and since they can’t just walk up and say hello, your bio and your picture has to do that for you.
The Zoomstart Greeter
I finally got around to putting my ugly mug on the about page. It might be stronger branding to put yourself in the header or the sidebar of your blog, but the about page works. Some people are shy and they don’t want to be known or seen. They just want to write their blog in anonymity. That’s fine, but it doesn’t help your brand. You have to be bold to build something big.
Feel free to rip my pic off the site and give me a Photoshop mohawk or whatever. Post it on your blog with a link to Zoomstart and if I’m amused enough, I just might link back to you!
Some Good About Pages
Here are some good about pages to check out to help you build your own:
- Bri at Trailblogging
- Jon at SmartWealthyRich
- Gregg at gregghawkins.com
- Nate at Nate Whitehall dot Com
- Liz Strauss at Successful Blog
- Darren Rowse at Problogger
Hey, thanks for the mention…AND great article. I very agree that branding is an essential part of creating a memorable blog in the blogosphere’s sea of look-alikes.
Thanks for dropping by Nate.
You’ve got a great theme for your site. And great branding overall. Keep up the good work!
It’s always great to include a picture in my opinion. Especially if you use mybloglog as well. You start to recognize who’s who and what not.
It also reminds me that I want to update my picture on my about page! 😀
I didn’t think that I would get a link to my About page. I think that branding is the most important thing for any blog after creating quality content.
Quality content will get people to read your articles, but quality branding will get people to come back.
Thank you very much for the linkage! 🙂
Excellent post! I told you, zoomstart is close to the top of my list! And this post just made it closer to the top! Really good job! Keep it up!
By the way your about page looks really nice! I’ll try to photoshop your pic a little hehe
Greg,
That’s the whole secret to MyBlogLog’s success … network branding. I haven’t gotten into it because I’ve got enough things on the to-do list as it is.
Bri,
Your about page kicks butt. Very funny. Good branding!
Jon,
Ha. I wasn’t too sure about that “massacre me in photoshop” invitation when I was writing it. But hey, whatever keeps it interesting right!
Note to self,
Put threaded comments plugin on to-do list …
Hi Shane – thanks for a really good article. I definitely agree that all blogs are a brand, and that if possible you should be using a custom theme (they can be picked up pretty cheap over in the SitePoint Marketplace).
“Blog writing takes time and effort. If you’re jazzed about the things you’re writing about and you know something about the topic, that time and effort is reduced drastically.”
I could not have written this any better myself. Having been in the blogging game for only a month now, it really has hit home just how much work it takes to develop a blog – if you aren’t passionate about the subject, then don’t do it!
Hi There! Good post! I talk about branding a lot in my blog, specially about blog branding, you might want to check, thanks.
Thanks George. I’ll check it out
Great read, indeed. 😉
I found this article to be really useful to help me ‘cement’ my own brand. All that I have to do is sort out my content’s direction. Thanks for the help buddy.
Hey Daniel,
Glad you found something useful!