Building a personal brand is an essential step for any professional or business owner that wants to get ahead. Developing a strong personal brand is a unique way to showcase yourself and your skills online.
One proven method for developing a believable personal brand online is by using a blog. If you’re like most professionals and business owners that use blogging in this way, you are probably aiming to:
- Create and develop an authentic voice
- Increase connections which may lead to future opportunities
- Build credibility within your niche
A personal brand gives you the opportunity to present yourself to the world in the exact way that you wish to. It can help highlight the things that you are passionate about and great at.
Ultimately, it leads to people feeling that they know you better and this leads them to trust you more. Blogging is a personal and fun way of developing this sense of trust. Perhaps that is why over 2 million blog posts are uploaded to blog sites daily.
2 million is a heck of a lot of blogs per day. So to make sure that your efforts aren’t wasted in an over-saturated market, follow the tips below and use blogging to prop up your personal brand online.
Table of Contents
#1 Choose your topics
The hardest part of blogging can be trying to decide exactly what you should choose to blog about. Spend some time figuring out where your passions lie. What are your aspirations for your career or your business?
Develop blog post ideas that are both of interest to you and offer some value within your niche. But try not to keep things too broad. It is worthwhile honing down in on a specific interest area. This will allow for your blog to be a space that people come to for specific information on your chosen topic.
Building your blog around a niche will also help with SEO backlinks service. Choose keywords that are commonly searched within your subject area and build blog topics around them.
It should go without saying that you should avoid blogging about topics that you have little idea about – unless you’re willing to put in the work and do your research. Creating a blog post that is filled with errors will do more harm to your business and personal branding than it will help it.
If you’re really stuck you could search for ideas online. Plenty of reputable sites offer lists of topics that you can blog about.
#2 Inject some personality
One of the most important parts of your blog will be the tone of voice that comes through when visitors read your posts.
It sounds like a cliche, but try and be yourself (albeit the best version). Use language that is conversational and try not to hide behind phrases and language that feels robotic and automated. Write in the first person and try to weave in parts of your personality.
You are building your brand voice here. What do you want that voice to say?
#3 Use a blog theme that is representative of your brand
Develop a blog theme that is in line with you and your personal brand. Make a list of the features that you would like on your blog and consider these when you are choosing your theme.
Think about the colour scheme of your personal brand and try to keep this consistent across your online presence. Colours and fonts should be easy to read (so that’s a big no to using yellow fonts on a white background). And remember that using the same fonts and colours on your blog as you do on your social media channels will lend credibility to your brand.
Ultimately, you should create a visual theme that reflects your brand and what you stand for. For example, your blog may be significantly more visual if you are an interior decorator compared with the blog of a copywriter.
Ensure that your site is easy to navigate and not overly cluttered with pop-ups and sidebars as this will keep people engaged for longer and make sure that your theme is responsive. This just means that it is easy to use on all types of devices.
After all, 80 per cent of smartphone users today check their phones before they brush their teeth. To encourage social media users to read the blog posts you have shared before they get out of bed, your posts need to be optimized for use on a phone.
#4 Share your content
You could create the best content on the internet but if you don’t market and share it on social media and in emails, it will never be seen.
Develop a strategy for how you hope to share your blog content. Consider creating infographics, memes and images to go along with your blog posts. Do you write about a specific individual or company? Share your blog post with them or tag them online.
You should particularly pay attention to encouraging influencers and those with a high following to share your posts and perhaps even consider paid advertisements, in order to get your blog out there initially.
When it comes to growing organic traffic, think outside the box and don’t just share your posts on the traditional social networks for blogging. Try sites such as Reddit, Quora, Slideshare and YouTube, where discussions are being had in your niche.
You could also feature blog posts in email campaigns. Utilize email flows to target specific posts to the people that would benefit most from reading. Never forget that your blog is all about adding value to the reader and positing you as a credible voice.
#5 Be consistent
The most important thing is to be consistent with your writing, posting and sharing. Make a content plan and stick to it.
Decide on the weekdays that you will bring out new buy guest blog posts, this way your followers will know when to expect new content and are more likely to go back to your site. If you are serious about building your brand online, you should post two to three times per week. It could help to create a backlog of relevant posts and slowly release them.
But be sure to constantly be brainstorming new ideas and staying in tune to new developments within your niche.
Consistency is extremely important when it comes to making sure that your blog content does not get lost on the internet. The more frequently you post relevant blogs, the more traction you will gain.