Most people do not think of themselves as brands. They think of themselves as having a great, marketable idea or a top-notch marketing tool or a book or motivational speech, but not as a brand. Viewing yourself, and therefore your product, as a brand will clarify the steps needed to take your idea, product or self out into the world and connect with consumers. Here are 7 quick blogging strategies you can adopt, right now, to boost your visibility and build you brand into a sales driving machine.
7 quick blogging strategies you can adopt right now
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Blog:
If you’re not blogging, you’re missing an important opportunity to spell out exactly who you are and what you offer to consumers in a way that positions you as a thought leader in your area of expertise. You can start a blog on WordPress or Blogger in minutes, and for free. No excuses on this one. As Nike says, “Just do it.” When I started my blog, I used my very first post to clearly share exactly what my brand stands for and to announce my presence to the waiting world. I also used that first post to establish my brand voice; personal, intimate, transparent.
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Guest blog:
Take your expertise out to the world by offering to guest blog for larger websites. In the last few months, I’ve written several blog articles for major sites such as Oprah.com. Doing so increased my visibility and helped bring my work to a new audience. The key when blogging for other sites is to make sure that you speak to that sites audience interests while still maintaining your own brand voice. I loved writing for Oprah.com because I was able to talk about overcoming challenges, which is just one element in developing a strongly branded platform.
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Encourage Discussion:
Blog posts that give step-by-step how-to information about a topic in which you are a pro will be highly viewed, encourage questions and responses and will increase your social currency as a teacher. A recent post on the blog Social Media Examiner by Nick Shin garners more than 214 questions and comments and another 752 retweets. That’s valuable word of mouth brand building.
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Lists:
Creating blog posts with lists is a spectacularly easy way to encourage other people to link to your post and provided info nuggets for a fast read. Darren Rowse of Problogger.com says lists can be short, they are pleasing to the eye and they are very likely to be passed on to others.
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Listen:
Check your Google analytics for some real insight into what your followers want from you. I wrote a post on How to Add a Twitter Button to your Facebook Fan Page more than a year ago that still ranks as the #1 draw to my website, so recently I updated it to reflect Facebook’s new look and added visuals to help people understand the instructions.
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Be Provocative:
I wrote a piece called “Bacon and Book Marketing Strategies” to illustrate the value in keeping up on trends. This piece spoke to my audience with humor but also grabbed the attention of a wider consumer base and brought new readers to my blog.
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Re-purpose your content:
As new people find and follow your blog, don’t be shy about bring up older posts and introducing them as a resource to this new groups of followers. Blogging powerful, useful content is a key component in my Maximum Visibility Plan.
I invite you to post a link here to the blog post you think best illustrates one of these ideas.
I am working on this branding thing for sure. It its weird to look at yourself as a brand but Im getting used to it. Nice list.
Thanks Lucy. Here’s the thing. Everything you do these days is visible. Every post, tweet, comment and “like” is noted. Then search engines compile a picture of your electronic footprint and people see that. So being aware that you yourself are actually a brand can help you make choices about using social media and any online site strategically. It gets easier.
Hey Cindy this is a great post. We in my company, are also faced with another problem, and that is negative publicity. The best way to solve it is to outrank the haters on Google results for frequent keywords. That is why we usually hire an SEO company. Thanks a lot, great info!
I think that dealing with negative comments or publicity is more complicated than outranking people in keyword search, although that’s one strategy. First, I’d want to know why the negative publicity exists and fix the problem, if I could. For example, is the product faulty, or is customer service inadequate or were mistakes made? If those can be addressed, publicly to demonstrate that the client listens, responds and cares, then those search results will nullify the negative comments.