I’ve been writing quite a lot of articles in these blogtips about how to grow your blog in the first year and how to enhance the initial blogging experience. I’ve noticed these last weeks that there are also some advanced bloggers in my readership so I thought it would be nice to write more articles about what to do when you want to take your blog to that famous “next level”. And although i personally think I’m not part of the higher echelon in the blogosphere I still believe I can shine a light on how to grow your blog. I am still learning a lot everyday so i will just share my experiences and what I’ve learned from them. After doing quite a lot of collaborations this year I sometimes felt like I was in a situation where I almost was drifting apart from my initial excitement on why I started blogging. Sure, as blogging becomes your full time job it won’t be all butterflies and fairy tales, (they don’t call it a job for nothing) but you always have to keep in check if you’re walking the right path. After these experiences I found out how important it is to absolutely brand your blog in a good and strong way. I found that especially when your personality and style is your identity and brand it is particularly hard to sell it. Here are my tips on how to do this:
1. Stay true to yourself: As you are the editor of your blog and probably the face of the blog as well you always have to stay true to yourself. Sounds like a cliche, I know but it’s so important to always remember this. You can’t create a strong brand if it’s too far away from your personality and from everything you stand for. It will be a lot easier to sell your ‘brand’ if it’s close to your heart, it motivates more and comes across strongly.
2. Find and write down your niche: As you can get carried away in the heat of the day, especially since the blogging world never stops it’s good to actually write down what you think your niche is. Once you have this written down you can always remember yourself of it. It’s very important so have this clear to yourself so you know from which angle you can work. It’s also important to think what makes you unique and special and to use this as your niche. For me personally it’s traveling and showing my personal style from all over the world whilst giving travel tips.
3. Write down a list of everything that matches your niche: Once you decided what your niche will be and you have this narrow focus it’s good to associate it with business opportunities. To make your brand stronger it’s very important to associate your brand with the right brands. Write down a list of everything that you feel fits your blog and what you’re doing and how you can use this to make your brand stronger.
4. Communicate your brand: This one is actually one of the most important points of the list. It is SO SO important to keep repeating and explaining to your readers and companies what your brand is and what it stands for. You can communicate this is so many ways, by always posting the same type of content, by always writing in the same style, by featuring brands that fit you very well, basically just going with a clear and focused strategy.
5. Learn when to say no: Once you start working on your branding you will have to say no to a lot of things. It might be hard in the beginning to do this (I still struggle with this from time to time) but in the end of the day it will make you a lot stronger and remember, one bad collaboration can really damage your brand or ruin your credibility. Be very clever about when to say yes and no.
I hope this helped you guys! Some of you might already dealt with this and some maybe not, but to me this subject is so important and I think all of us bloggers should think about this. If you guys have any additions to this post, please let me know!
Disclaimer: Header image found on Weheartit
