If you want your business to be well-known and successful, you should focus on branding. One way on how you can do this is by creating a blog. Blogs can help you rank highly on search engines as well as allow you to share your content on social media networks. It can be difficult to get traction if you only share product and sales pages. You can have a higher chance of receiving traffic if you share informative and interesting blog posts.
More importantly, blogs can help build your brand. You can use videos, images, audio files, infographics, tutorials, podcasts, and other elements to pique the interest of your prospective customers. You can also use articles that are informative and relevant to your business. Whichever you choose, see to it that you upload great content that will keep your readers hooked.
Common Fears on Branding and Blogging
Usually, business owners experience two different kinds of fear when it comes to blogging and building their brand. One is that they will run out of ideas and things to blog about. Another is that they will accidentally give away trade secrets that can ruin their business. Well, you should be relieved to know that these fears are irrational. Hence, you should stop worrying and start focusing on your business.
It is not possible to completely run out of ideas. You can always find something new to write about. You just have to broaden your horizon and be more open to possibilities. You should not stick to specific topics. You can write about other topics that are related. For instance, if you have a bait shop, you should not limit yourself to writing about crickets and worms. You can also blog about other items that people can buy at your bait shop.
As for the fear of giving away trade secrets and losing your business, you should not be too pessimistic. This fear is actually very common within industries such as SEO. For instance, a lot of brands feel that giving out generic steps on how to build links is already enough to help customers and at the same time protect their business. Well, this is not true. In fact, it can even be damaging.
If you only give generic advice to your customers, they will think that you are not serious about helping them out. Eventually, they will lose interest in transacting with you. On the other hand, if you offer them an in-depth and complex tutorial, they will view you as an expert who is truly willing to help them. However, since they do not have the resources or time to learn everything on their own, they will continue to do business with you. This is great because they trust you.
So How Can You Build Your Brand?
First, you need to create an online persona. To have a branding strategy, you need to achieve franchise in the mind. Whenever your prospective customers see your logo or hear your jingle, they should automatically think of your business. Likewise, they should remember you when they see your slogan or anything that is related to your business. To make this happen, you should include your business logo or slogan in your blog along with other elements, such as jingles.
Next, you should promote conversations. Keep in mind that blogging is about making conversations with your customers. Through this personal interaction, your customers can get to know you better. If you want to maintain a good relationship with them, you should make them like and trust you. Blogs are excellent tools for conversational media marketing because they can serve as a venue for existing customers, prospective customers, and you to exchange ideas, ask questions, and provide feedback.
You can also build your brand via word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth is the best kind of marketing strategy because it is free and easy. Through your blog, your customers can speak with you and other people. They can create a profile, so they can leave comments or send private messages to you and other members. Your blog readers can actually become brand-building evangelists who can help you spread your presence throughout different networks. They can build your brand by leaving positive remarks and feedback on your blog.
Another way to build branding is to connect with your target audience. When you establish deep relationships, you effectively influence other people. Once you gain their trust, it would be easy for you to influence their thoughts and feelings about your business. Then again, this does not mean that you have to manipulate your viewers. Remember that they can tell when a person is not being real with them. If you want to have a deeper relationship, you should make them feel that you value them by being honest and transparent.
In addition, you can build branding through social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Nearly everyone in the world has access to social media. Each day, millions of people open their social media accounts to find out what is trending. If you want your business to be known to more people, you should syndicate your blog to these social networks. You can also add peer-to-peer layers on your blog, such as customer ratings, reviews, and message boards.
Furthermore, you can partner with your customers through postmodern branding. In postmodern branding, the brand is created by the audience instead of branding experts. Today, brands typically emerge from interactive market conversations amongst customers. If you want your business to be more popular, you should become partners with your customers. Your blog is a great place to start creating this partnership.
You can also create a guest blog. Through guest blogging, you can build your authority and online brand presence. You simply have to find a blog whose readers are likely to be interested in your brand, and create great content for that particular blog. Make sure that your content generates additional comments, traffic, and social shares for the blog owner. Do not forget to save the links to your guest posts for future reference.
