How To Turn Your Blog Into A Successful Brand

The transition of turning your blog from a side project into a successful brand is something that most people struggle with. All of the sudden you’re faced with so many questions that seem completely foreign. What are your current engagement metrics? What is your projected growth? Do you have any lead magnets?

The funny thing is, a lot of blogs fail at becoming a successful brand because they get the fundamentals wrong, not all the fancy stuff. It might seem complicated at first, but we’ve broken down the process into 4 easy steps below to help you establish a good foundation and turn your blog into a successful brand.

Also read: Best Examples of How Brands Use Instagram Stories (Infographic)

Figure out what the focus of your brand will be and stick to it.

It doesn’t have to be a super niche, but it shouldn’t be completely general either. Once you’ve decided that you want to turn your blog into a brand, you need to be able to explain the heart of it pretty easily.

Start by taking a look through some of the posts that performed very well, and those that you really enjoyed writing. Do you notice anything in common among these posts? If not, don’t worry. A blog can be haphazard, but a brand needs focus.

Take some time thinking about what you want your brand to look like and come up with a cohesive brand statement. This should clearly identify the core of your brand. Even if all of your existing posts don’t exactly fit this statement just yet, don’t worry, you’ll deal with that in coming steps. For now you just need to come up with a focus.

Also read: 5 Ways to Brand Your Company and Increase Sales

Optimize your blog around this focus

Don’t get scared, but this is the more technical aspect of turning your blog into a successful brand. In addition to making sure that the content you publish is high-quality, you have to make sure that your posts are optimized for users and search engines alike. If you skip this step, then you’re making it harder for your ideal audience to find you and your brand.

Start optimizing your blog by doing some basic keyword research around the blog’s focus topic. This process is the same whether you’re making your brand something more professional or building up your personal brand instead. Come up with a keyword list and see how you can work those topics into your posts and in important locations within the blog itself.

Create an internal linking strategy on your blog.

Blogs let people come and go, but content from an effective brand keeps people engaged. Successful brands also promote their own CTA. A CTA or call-to-action can be an image or line of text that encourages your visitors to take a particular action. Your blog may have more than one CTA. But the point is to lead visitors to another location or take an action instead of just having them move on to something else when they finish engaging with your content.

When creating an internal linking strategy on your blog, your CTAs will likely include links to specific posts that you’ve written in the past that are related to the current post the user is reading. If you have any products or services you are promoting, you will want to bring attention to them with a CTA as well. Spend some time really thinking about the internal linking strategy on your blog so you can get as much engagement as possible from the people who visit your site.

Create content that matters.

From now on, make it a rule to not write the same old stuff that everyone else writes. Because really, who needs it? Churning out posts that could show up anywhere isn’t going to win over any readers. Instead focus on finding your unique angle or twist that you can add to the conversation.

Also read: Social Media Advantage for Brands

All successful brands have their own unique voice that makes them special and differentiates them from everyone else. So once you identify what it is that makes your brand’s voice distinct from all the other noise out there, make sure that your new content is in line with this. Don’t forget to go back over old content and look at it through this lens as well. If past posts don’t make the cut, then either improve them or delete them. But only scrap something if it has absolutely no chance of bringing you traffic. Try to resuscitate as many posts as possible!

Now that you have a focus, an basic keyword strategy, a sound internal linking strategy and are creating content that matters, you’re well on your way to turning your blog into a successful brand.